Replika founder raises $20M pre-seed for Wabi, the ‘YouTube of apps’ 

Eugenia Kuyda noticed the way forward for shopper AI earlier than most. She based Replika, the primary main AI companion startup, in 2017 — years earlier than ChatGPT launched. In the present day, it has 35 million customers.  

Now Kuyda is again with a brand new startup referred to as Wabi, which she describes as YouTube for apps — a social platform the place anybody can use prompts to immediately create mini apps and share them with buddies. Wabi, which launched in beta final month, is a harbinger of one other shopper AI shift: one the place customized software program turns into the norm. 

Wabi has raised $20 million in pre-seed funding from a stellar listing of angels, together with AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, Twitch co-founder Justin Kan, Replit CEO Amjad Masad, Notion co-founder Akshay Kothari, Neuralink co-founder DJ Website positioning, and Conviction founder Sarah Guo. 

“[Kuyda] was early and proper to AI companions, despite the fact that it wasn’t apparent on the time,” Anish Acharya, basic accomplice at Andreessen Horowitz, informed Trendster. “It’s very uncommon to search out somebody who’s obtained a monitor report for predicting what customers will need, and we predict she’s doing it once more.”

Kuyda is coming into a sizzling market. Vibe-coding instruments like Cursor and Lovable have attracted vital VC curiosity, whereas no-code AI platforms, together with Emergent, Replit, and Bloom, are racing to let non-technical customers construct apps by prompts. Wabi’s distinction: an built-in platform for creation, discovery, and internet hosting — no app retailer required. 

“This was actually made to assist individuals who don’t have anything to do with coding or the tech world to in a short time create apps from their day by day lives,” Kuyda, who final week joined us onstage at Trendster Disrupt 2025 to debate AI companions, informed Trendster. “All that you must put in is ‘construct me an AI remedy app,’ and that’s it. It is going to counsel options, and you may brainstorm, however it’ll construct you an app. You don’t should be nice at prompting. You by no means see the code.” 

Earlier this week, Wabi launched sure social options to beta customers — issues like the flexibility to love, remark, and remix any present app, in addition to try consumer profiles to see what others favored, used, or constructed. 

X has been blowing up about Wabi because it began shelling out invitations to pick out customers. A number of founders, designers, and buyers from around the globe have posted about Wabi’s ease of making apps for themselves. Even Google DeepMind product lead Logan Kilpatrick gave Wabi a shout-out. 

“We imagine that the social layer is completely important as a result of it permits for a lot extra creativity and discovery, and these mini apps change into group starters or dialog starters,” Kuyda stated.  

Wabi’s Discover web page at the moment options latest and fashionable apps, although Kuyda stated it’s going to change into extra algorithmic over time. The startup plans to launch customized onboarding within the coming weeks, routinely producing starter apps for brand spanking new customers.

Wabi’s core promise isn’t too totally different from ChatGPT’s GPT retailer or the bot from Quora’s Poe: Construct mini apps utilizing prompts that would resolve small issues for you. Apps like Wabi have been capable of bundle this promise effectively by way of clients not having to arrange any technical infrastructure. Even if you happen to enter a couple of sentences, Wabi handles issues like creating an icon or organising databases, and deciding what the UI of the app would seem like.  

Kuyda informed Trendster that for apps that require something to be AI-generated, customers can open the settings and select their foundational mannequin (like in the event that they need to use ChatGPT or Gemini) and even rewrite the prompts that Wabi comes up with. 

Making a fundamental app is easy. Nonetheless, you may have to debug the app to keep away from errors, which is to be anticipated in a growth life cycle.  

For instance, we created an app that confirmed us a canine image on daily basis with a canine truth. After a couple of days of utilization, we realized the app was producing the identical set of canine. After we noticed one other consumer’s day by day information app, all of the dates talked about on the abstract pictures have been October 1, 2023, whereas the information gadgets have been a couple of weeks previous. Plus, one of many sources for information was, oddly, Wikipedia. 

The onus is on the consumer to have an curiosity in sustaining the apps. In any other case, you may discover lots of unmanaged mini apps within the discovery part of those vibe-coding apps. 

Kuyda says it’s nonetheless early days for Wabi, and they’re nonetheless figuring out how to make sure that apps are able to exit of the field. She famous that there are nonetheless mannequin constraints which are bettering on daily basis. She says a giant chunk of the $20 million will go towards constructing out Wabi’s product crew. 

A part of the funding can be going towards successfully subsidizing using Wabi till the startup figures out a monetization mannequin. Kuyda says she’s not concerned with internet hosting adverts on the platform, which results in incentives that create darkish patterns. 

“I constructed Replika and by no means had any adverts,” she stated. “I believe adverts simply create a fairly unhealthy consumer expertise. I like creating pleasant consumer experiences.” 

Acharya believes that when the community results take off, it is going to be simple to monetize. He sees a future the place there’s a professionalization aspect that may occur on the platform, the place most of the youngsters immediately who need to be TikTok stars may as a substitute make software program on Wabi.  

“You consider the historical past of YouTube, it began out as individuals placing these shaky, low-budget content material experiences,” he stated. “Now, 20 years later, it’s tremendous excessive manufacturing worth.” 

Acharya added that there’s much more alternative with software program as a result of “video content material has decaying worth over time,” he stated. “Software program has compounding worth.” If someone builds the subsequent hit app, it’ll proceed to be related over the course of time.

The concept matches neatly into Acharya’s thesis on the way forward for “disposable software program” — small, versatile apps that folks can create and discard as simply as opening a brand new tab or having a fast chat with ChatGPT. 

“I believe software program is the ultimate frontier of participation,” Acharya stated. “The web has been this driving pressure for participation … the place anybody can submit their ideas. It’s type of unusual that the web is clearly all software program, but so few individuals have been capable of make it.” 

So what does a web3 seem like when everybody can construct and share software program inside a couple of minutes? 

“It feels just like the web has gotten kind of scientific — we’re all utilizing the identical Instagram, the identical TikTok, we all have the identical house screens, apps have gotten fairly monotone,” he stated. “I believe the chance with Wabi is it’s going to revive a few of that punk, unusual, early ’90s net ethos.”