Engineer.ai has been up and running in private beta mode for two and a half years, totally boo-strapped by its founders. But today it launches with the claim to be the world’s first human-assisted AI for building custom digital products. It’s Builder platform claims to combine artificial intelligence with crowdsourced teams of designers and developers to build bespoke digital products at – they say – twice the speed and less than

a third of the cost of traditional software development.

So were are talking the ability to build a smartphone app, say, very easily and quickly, choosing from recommended features or adding others. The AI then creates a “build card” which guarantees a maximum price and estimated delivery date. It then taps a library of existing components and manages crowdsourced global teams for aspects that might be unique. The platform can host the end product and carry on upgrading the product.

“Builder redesigns how software is created, enabling everyone with an idea in their head to get an app in their hand,” says Engineer.ai co-founder Sachin Dev Duggal. “We’re disrupting traditional software development by removing the shroud of mystery around code design, giving transparency and control to the creators – the people with ideas. This is made possible by our proprietary artificial intelligence, which can price, spec, write, and create products faster and more efficiently.”

Co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Sachin Dev Duggal and Saurabh Dhoot, the company, which has been bootstrapped on the proceeds of the sale of their previous startup, nivio. Virgin Unite, Richard Branson’s philanthropy arm, used it for its Campaign against the Death Penalty & Criminal Justice, for instance.

At a certain level it competes with Gigster albeit they have really taken a very different approach (assembly line and buying excess capacity from over 65 Dev shops in 10 timezones) whereas Gigster is more like a modern day consulting shop.

This means Engineer will likely have more scale, with access to 21,000 devs and designers, and over 500 building blocks.

Additionally, it offers upgrade insurance and a marketplace for all the services that run a bespoke digital product (hosting, microservices etc).