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Avishay Cohen
Co-founder and CEO · Anima
Design to code Y Combinator
Cohen believes billions of people will soon build software, and Anima, already used by more than 1.8 million builders, wants to be the layer that turns their designs into working code.
“AI brings a new era for design and product, where code is the new canvas,” Avishay Cohen said in February 2026, when IBM invested in his company. He is co-founder and CEO of Anima, a Tel Aviv, Israel company whose tools turn Figma designs, prompts, and websites into React and HTML code.
A Designer and Developer Couple
Cohen founded Anima in 2017 with Michal Cohen, describing the pair as a developer-designer couple. Or Arbel, creator of the viral app Yo, was also a co-founder and has since left. Michal Cohen now leads product as chief product officer.
Y Combinator and a Series A
Anima went through Y Combinator in summer 2018. In 2021 it raised a $10 million Series A led by MizMaa Ventures, when it served roughly half a million users. Its Figma plugin grew into the most used Figma tool for code generation, Anima says.
Three Billion Coders
“Three billion people will soon code,” Cohen said. Anima now powers design imports inside Bolt.new and Replit, and it offers an MCP server that gives AI coding agents design context. IBM made a strategic investment in February 2026 to help bring Anima to more enterprise teams.
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Facts on this page
- Cohen founded Anima in 2017 with Michal Cohen, Ctech reported, describing the pair as a developer-designer couple.
- In 2021 it raised a $10 million Series A led by MizMaa Ventures, when it served roughly half a million users, according to Ctech.
- “Three billion people will soon code,” Cohen told Ctech.