The AI studio that doesn't hand you a demo and call it done. x1 builds production-ready iOS apps in native Swift + Xcode - the same stack behind every million-download app on the store.
The dirty secret of AI app generators: almost none of them produce something you'd actually submit to the App Store. You get a prototype that looks great in a screenshot and falls apart the moment a real user touches it. The code is unreadable. The architecture is held together with prompt engineering and hope.
x1 looked at that gap - between what AI can generate and what the App Store actually requires - and decided it was worth fixing properly. Not with more impressive demos. With a structured system that handles the whole job.
Built for the long game - leaves you with an app you actually own, can edit, extend, and trust.
- x1 Product PhilosophyThe output is Swift. Real Swift. The same language Apple engineers use. The kind that runs fast, scales, and doesn't make a senior developer wince when they open the file. You own the code. You can take it anywhere. That's not a selling point buried in the FAQ - it's the whole point.
x1 isn't a chatbot you point at an idea and hope for the best. It's a suite of purpose-built studios, each handling a specific phase of the build. Together they cover the entire arc from "I have an idea" to "I have an app on the store."
The core platform. Build apps modularly with live preview - add screens, wire up features, and watch your app take shape in real-time. Every decision the AI makes is fully visible. No black boxes. No guessing what was generated or why.
Generate and refine your app's entire visual identity through conversation - name, color palette, typography, icon. The kind of branding work that used to take a designer two weeks and three rounds of revisions.
Model your app's revenue potential with real data - user growth curves, paid conversion rates, MRR projections. Know your business before you build it, not after you've already shipped.
App Store metadata, screenshots, submission prep - the part every developer dreads and every non-developer finds impossible. x1 handles it as part of the flow, not as an afterthought.
Build user onboarding flows that actually convert. The first 30 seconds of app experience determine whether a user stays or leaves - x1 treats that as a design challenge worth solving seriously.
No mockups required. No technical specs. Just tell x1 what your app does, who it's for, and what problem it solves. The AI asks the right follow-up questions.
Watch your app take shape in real-time as you add features, screens, and functionality. Every change is visible immediately. If you don't like it, you say so and it changes.
The Brand Studio generates a complete visual identity - icon, colors, typography - through conversation. Iterate until it's right. You're the creative director; x1 is the production team.
Before you ship, understand what the business could look like. Real projections based on real App Store data - not wishful thinking dressed up in a chart.
The Launch Studio handles metadata, screenshots, and submission. You end up with a production-ready Swift + Xcode project that you own completely and can extend indefinitely.
Before founding x1, Manil was an operator on the Generative AI team at Scale AI - one of the companies that built the data infrastructure underpinning most of today's AI models. Before that, he worked on the Facebook Reality Labs team at Meta, building products at the intersection of hardware and software. He's not a first-time builder who got excited about ChatGPT. He's someone who worked inside the machine, understood its limitations, and decided to build something that addressed them properly.
The insight behind x1 comes from that experience: AI can generate impressive-looking output very quickly, but the gap between "impressive demo" and "shippable product" is enormous - and most tools pretend that gap doesn't exist. x1 was built to close it.
x1 is founded in San Francisco by Manil Lakabi, drawing on his experience from Scale AI and Meta to tackle the AI-to-production gap in mobile app development.
x1 joins Y Combinator's Fall 2024 batch - the inaugural cohort of YC's first-ever Fall program. David Lieb serves as their primary YC partner.
x1.new launches publicly with the tagline "Ship your App. For Real." - targeting the gap between AI-generated demos and production-ready App Store submissions.
x1 presents at YC Fall 2024 Demo Day. The platform is live, generating native Swift + Xcode code with modular studios for design, branding, monetization, and launch.
The website is x1.new - "new" is both the TLD and the thesis. Every app you build is new. Every builder who shows up is new to this. The name says everything.
x1 generates actual Swift code in an actual Xcode project. You own it. You can hire a developer to extend it. You can leave x1 entirely. That's not a bug - it's the feature.
While most AI tools herd users into waitlists, x1 runs a Discord. Builders talking to builders. Feedback loops that actually reach the product team.
Swift + Xcode is not the easy choice for an AI output format. It's the right choice. x1 chose hard correctness over easy impressiveness. That gap matters.
x1 is live at x1.new. The Discord is open. The app is real. If you've been waiting for permission to build your iOS app idea, this is closer to permission than anything else on the market.