People and AI working together, in any app — the story behind Liveblocks 3.0

We love the idea of the lone genius—one person, one breakthrough—but that's almost never the case.

If you think about it, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone on stage in 2007, it wasn't just him. It was Wozniak in the garage who started the company, and thousands of other Apple employees who brought that product to life.

Armstrong landed on the moon, but it wasn't just him. It was the work of thousands—operators, engineers—who made the project a reality.

And what this shows is that nothing meaningful is ever built alone.

Why did you start Liveblocks?

I had spent years working on creative tools at companies like InVision and Facebook. What I found is that a lot of the features we were building around collaboration felt like reinventing the wheel.

Most apps use the same kind of collaboration patterns. They all feel kind of the same. And the features that actually drive user engagement and growth—like comments, notifications, or multiplayer editing—while they may seem simple, are actually extremely hard to build.

So, we set out to solve that with Liveblocks. We wanted to make it really easy for companies to build collaborative apps, without having to hire hundreds, if not thousands, of engineers to put it all together in-house.

What changed since those early days?

In the beginning, we focused on realtime infrastructure—basically providing the building blocks for developers to build realtime apps that feel like Figma or Google Docs. Apps where multiple people can use the same file or document simultaneously: draw things together, write together, see live cursors… so it's clear who's doing what.

That's what we built initially. And we had a good amount of traction.

But what we learned is—even though that was powerful—there was still a lot of engineering work needed to build an end-to-end collaborative app like Figma, Notion, or Google Docs.

So we decided to go deeper into the most commonly used collaboration features across those tools. We started shipping pre-built React components for comments. We did the same with in-app notifications. And we made it easier to integrate multiplayer editing into text experiences.

So if your product already has a text editor, we made it easy to turn that into something more like Google Docs—with realtime collaboration, annotations, comments, and all that.

That was chapter two for the company. We've grown massively since then.

And now we're entering a new chapter: Liveblocks 3.0—and I'm very excited about it.

What is Liveblocks 3.0 about?

We're entering a new era where every company has to figure out how to integrate AI into their product—not as a simple add-on, but as something truly useful and valuable for users. Something that's deeply integrated into their workflows.

Right now, even for me, what I often do is: I use one app, then switch tabs to talk to ChatGPT or Claude to get work done and collaborate with AI.

But there's a lot of back and forth. You switch context, switch tools—something happens here, something else there—lots of copy-pasting. It works, but it feels broken.

And the more people do this, the less likely they are to come back to the original app. A lot more work ends up happening in those AI tools.

What we want to do with Liveblocks 3.0 is enable engineering and product teams to bring those AI experiences into their own products—so that users don't need to bounce between tools. So that the AI has more context: about the product, the app's state, what actions are possible, and the knowledge relevant to that experience.

That makes the AI more powerful, more useful, and more like a real collaborator—inside the app.

And because we already offer other collaborative features like comments, notifications, and multiplayer editing, it's not just about one person working with one AI. It's about entire teams—and sets of AIs—working together inside the product to get way more done.

Who are you building this for?

We're building for product and engineering teams who care deeply about quality. Teams that want to add world-class collaborative and AI features to their product—without spending years of engineering time building it all from scratch.

Our team has spent countless hours studying the best products out there—understanding the tiny details that make them special. Then we package those insights into ready-made features, so you can give your users the same world-class experience.

Tell us about the team behind Liveblocks

We're a remote team of passionate and kind people who care deeply about their craft. I know for sure—everyone at Liveblocks is incredibly passionate about what they do. They care about delivering great user experience and great developer experience.

We're proud to make a product we can truly put our name behind.

What's next for Liveblocks?

We believe the best products in the world won't be solo experiences anymore.

They'll be shared spaces—where teams and AI work together in realtime.

So we're building the best interface layer to power that. Whether you're a startup or an enterprise, we're giving you the tools to build collaborative experiences between humans and AI—without any compromise.