In many organizations today operations managers, product leads, sales practitioners and finance professionals can add a new title to their resumes: software engineer.

That’s one of the outcomes from the rise of low-code/no-code platforms through which developing and safely deploying software for internal use is becoming more widely adopted. One of the companies at the forefront of this movement – Retool Inc. – made a series of announcements on Tuesday designed to equip non-engineers with the tools for generating code and building prototypes.

The company launched its AI AppGen platform, designed for users to build enterprise applications using natural language while leveraging production data and security guardrails.

“AI has dropped the bar to prototype, but the bar to ship hasn’t moved,” said Retool Chief Executive David Hsu (pictured). “Describe the app you want and in just a few minutes, you’ve got an app. Our goal is to help you build the very best internal software.”

Raising the quality of internal tools

Hsu spoke Tuesday at the inaugural Retool Summit in San Francisco, where the company outlined its roadmap for providing low-code/no-code tools for an expanding pool of non-developers who are interested in building enterprise apps. Retool also released the results from a survey of more than 1,100 internal builders that found 48% of non-engineers can now build software directly.

This movement is being driven by what Hsu characterized in his keynote remarks as the “shockingly low quality of the average internal tool.” In an exclusive interview with SiliconANGLE during the event, Hsu explained that internal tools often take a back seat in priority for many organizations as they push to release new products and drive revenue.

“Engineers just hate on working on internal tools,” Hsu said. “It’s not a category of software most people think about. It’s a little sad honestly and that’s something we want to change.”

Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison spoke with Retool CEO David Hsu during the Retool Summit.

One of Retool’s customers is the payments processing platform Stripe Inc. Stripe can be integrated into a Retool application to generate customized enhancements for payment systems.

In conversation with Hsu on Tuesday, Stripe co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison noted that continued underinvestment in internal tooling by companies has fueled interest in Retool to bridge this gap. “Retool felt like some kind of missing piece,” Collison said. “If you work at Stripe, you are a Retool user out of necessity.”

Uber builds partner plug-ins

Other customers echo Collison in describing the need to strengthen internal tools for running a business. Uber Inc. is using Retool to build integrations with key consumer partners such as McDonalds, Home Depot and Shopify, along with partner plug-ins custom built to address operational needs on-the-fly.

“Retool allows us to tweak minuscule things that have a big impact,” Burger Ebersohn, global head of partner engineering at Uber, explained during an appearance at the San Francisco event. “We rebuilt the whole backend for Shopify using Retool in two weeks.”

Retool’s impact is also enabling companies in more traditional industries to extend AI-driven app building throughout the organization. Colgate-Palmolive Co. decided not long after the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022 that it would offer AI as a tool for everyone within the firm. It created the AI Hub as a resource for providing secure access for all employees.

Today, 140,000 unique users or 90% of Colgate-Palmolive’s desk worker population are engaged with the internal AI platform. “We wanted everyone to have it,” Kli Pappas, global head of AI at Colgate-Palmolive, said during an onstage appearance. “It was incredible to see how many people wanted to be builders.”

During his keynote remarks, Retool’s Hsu described how he had been inspired to start his company by Amazon Web Services Inc. He closed his presentation with an admonition for the audience to “go build,” echoing the signature line and blog title of Amazon’s Chief Technical Officer Werner Vogels.

When asked by SiliconANGLE how AWS had inspired him, Hsu explained that he was trying to do for app generation what Amazon had done for the cloud.

“They have taken away all this baggage that you used have to think about as a developer,” Hsu said. “They have commoditized the infrastructure layer. We want to bring a commodification of the app layer as well.”

Photo: Mark Albertson/SiliconANGLE