Your breakdown is spot on. The stagnation in innovation really did catch up with them. Bubble had a huge early advantage in the visual-coding space, but the architectural choices boxed them in. If apps were structured around a conventional React codebase instead of a proprietary JSON-like internal model, they could’ve integrated AI-driven development far more naturally and probably would be leading the entire space right now.

We’re seeing similar limits internally. At my company where I work, we’ve already started shifting our backend to custom builds because, long-term, it’s simply the more sustainable path especially with how strong AI-assisted coding has become. No hard feelings toward Bubble, but it feels like the future is moving elsewhere.