Building software used to look a lot like construction: large teams, big budgets, long timelines, and expensive mistakes. Then AI changed the math.
For serial Miami founder Albert Santalo, that shift was a signal that software itself was about to be rebuilt.
A software engineer by training, Santalo built two venture-backed South Florida healthtech companies – Avisena and CareCloud – before launching 8base in 2017 to tackle what he saw as a broken development process. At first, he bet on low-code. Then AI arrived, and his thinking changed fast.
“I just really quickly came to the conclusion that this was a game changer for software development,” Santalo told Refresh Miami.
That realization led to Archie, named for its original concept: an AI product architect. The distinction matters. Santalo argues most AI coding tools focus on building software but ignore the planning and design work that comes first.
“There’s this process that happens before you try to build something where you’re actually designing things and thinking about it and planning it,” Santalo said. “That process hadn’t changed much since the beginning of computing.”
Archie aims to change that by taking users from idea to production. The platform combines prompt-based development, spec-based building, code editing, and visual development in one system, backed by its own infrastructure.
Santalo is blunt about the current wave of “vibe coding” platforms. Many are good at prototypes, he said, but fall short when it comes to production-ready products.
“They’ve solved a big problem, which is prototyping,” he said. “But we don’t feel like anything that’s out there is really taking you from idea to production.”
That belief has shaped Archie’s rollout. Instead of rushing out a lightweight MVP, the company spent more than a year building quietly. It now has about 40 employees, has served roughly 30 enterprise clients through its services arm, and is preparing for a public launch this month.
Santalo sees a bigger shift underway. As AI lowers the cost and skill barriers to building software, far more people – founders, designers, product managers, even nontechnical operators – will be able to create technology on their own terms. (Recent case in point: Demian Bellumio and Betterness.)
Having built companies here since the 1990s, when Miami was barely on the startup map, Santalo has watched the city grow into a serious tech hub.
“I think Miami may emerge as maybe the most important city in the United States over the next 25 years,” Santalo asserted.
Big words, yes. But Santalo is betting his next company on an even bigger idea: that the future belongs to the people bold enough to build.
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