From AI Companions to AI-Powered Creativity
Eugenia Kuyda, best known for creating Replika, one of the first mainstream AI companion apps, is once again making waves in the artificial intelligence landscape. Founded in 2017, Replika now boasts more than 35 million users worldwide — a testament to Kuyda’s foresight in consumer AI long before ChatGPT entered the scene.
Now, Kuyda is turning her attention to a new venture called Wabi, a platform she describes as “YouTube for apps.” The idea: allow anyone, regardless of technical background, to instantly create mini applications using simple text prompts and share them socially.
Launched in beta last month, Wabi represents a new phase in consumer AI — one that blends creation, discovery, and personalization into a single, frictionless experience.
$20 Million Pre-Seed Round and Star-Studded Investors
Wabi has already caught the attention of Silicon Valley’s most prominent investors. The startup raised $20 million in pre-seed funding from notable figures, including:
- Naval Ravikant, co-founder of AngelList
- Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator
- Justin Kan, co-founder of Twitch
- Amjad Masad, CEO of Replit
- Akshay Kothari, co-founder of Notion
- DJ Seo, co-founder of Neuralink
- Sarah Guo, founder of Conviction
“[Kuyda] was early and right to AI companions, even though it wasn’t obvious at the time,” said Anish Acharya, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, in an interview with TechCrunch. “It’s very rare to find someone who’s got a track record for predicting what consumers will want, and we think she’s doing it again.”
Democratizing App Creation
At its core, Wabi aims to make app development accessible to everyone. “This was really made to help people who have nothing to do with coding or the tech world to very quickly create apps from their daily lives,” Kuyda told TechCrunch during TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
All users need to do is type something like “build me an AI therapy app,” and Wabi handles the rest — from generating features and icons to setting up databases and designing the interface. “You don’t need to be great at prompting. You never see the code,” Kuyda explained.
This user-friendly approach positions Wabi among a growing number of “vibe-coding” platforms such as Cursor, Lovable, and no-code AI tools like Emergent, Replit, and Bloom — all competing to empower non-developers to build apps using natural language.
The Social Side of Software Creation
Beyond creation tools, Wabi is introducing a social layer — a key differentiator in a crowded field. Beta users can now like, comment, remix, and explore other users’ creations. “We believe that the social layer is absolutely critical because it allows for so much more creativity and discovery,” Kuyda said.
This feature quickly gained traction online. Founders, designers, and investors across X (formerly Twitter) have been praising Wabi’s simplicity and creative potential. Even Logan Kilpatrick, a product lead at Google DeepMind, gave the app a public endorsement.
Wabi’s “Explore” page currently highlights trending and recent apps, and Kuyda revealed plans to introduce personalized onboarding and AI-powered recommendations soon.
Still Early Days — and Challenges Ahead
While Wabi makes app creation effortless, maintaining these mini apps remains a user responsibility. During beta testing, some users reported repeated outputs or outdated data in generated apps — typical early-stage challenges for AI-driven platforms.
Kuyda acknowledged that the team is working on improving reliability and expanding its product team using part of the $20 million funding. She also emphasized Wabi’s ad-free philosophy, echoing her Replika days: “I built Replika and never had any ads. I think ads just create a pretty bad user experience. I like creating delightful user experiences.”
The Future: Software as a Social Experience
Investors like Acharya see Wabi as a glimpse into a new era of “disposable software” — small, flexible, user-generated apps that can be created and shared as easily as posting a video or a tweet.
“You think about the history of YouTube,” Acharya said. “It started out as people putting up these shaky, low-budget content experiences. Now, 20 years later, it’s super high production value.”
But unlike video content, Acharya sees software as compounding in value: “If somebody builds the next hit app, it’ll continue to be relevant over time.”
He believes Wabi could reignite the creative, experimental spirit of the early internet: “The internet has gotten sort of clinical — we’re all using the same Instagram, the same TikTok. I think the opportunity with Wabi is it’s going to restore some of that punk, strange, early ’90s web ethos.”
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