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

[ad_1] 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. At this time 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 associates. Wabi, which launched in beta final month, is a harbinger of one other shopper AI shift: one the place personalised 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 Search engine optimisation, and Conviction founder Sarah Guo.

“[Kuyda] was early and proper to AI companions, although it wasn’t apparent on the time,” Anish Acharya, basic accomplice at Andreessen Horowitz, informed TechCrunch. “It’s very uncommon to seek out somebody who’s bought a observe report for predicting what shoppers will need, and we predict she’s doing it once more.”

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

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“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 every day lives,” Kuyda, who final week joined us on stage at Disrupt to debate AI companions, informed TechCrunch. “All it is advisable to put in is ‘construct me an AI remedy app,’ and that’s it. It can counsel options and you'll 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.

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

what if the app retailer was social?with wabi, it's.

introducing the social app retailer the place you possibly can immediately see what apps your mates are creating, loving, and remixing pic.twitter.com/tfjltyZApv

— wabi (@wabi) November 3, 2025

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

Wabi’s Discover web page at present options latest and well-liked apps, although Kuyda mentioned it'll turn into extra algorithmic over time. The startup plans to launch personalised onboarding within the coming weeks, mechanically producing starter apps for brand 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 remedy small issues for you. Apps like Wabi have been capable of package deal this promise properly when it comes to clients not having to arrange any technical infrastructure. Even should you enter just a few sentences, Wabi handles issues like creating an icon or organising databases, and deciding what the UI of the app would appear to be.

Kuyda informed TechCrunch 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.

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Making a fundamental app is straightforward. Nonetheless, you may must 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 daily with a canine truth. After just a few days of utilization, we realized the app was producing the identical set of canines. After we noticed one other consumer’s every day information app, all of the dates talked about on the abstract pictures had been October 1, 2023, whereas the information objects had been just a few 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 a number 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 understanding how to make sure that apps are able to exit of the field. She famous that there are nonetheless mannequin constraints that are bettering daily. She says an enormous chunk of the $20 million will go in the direction of constructing out Wabi’s product staff.

A part of the funds are additionally going in the direction of successfully subsidizing use of Wabi till the startup figures out a monetization mannequin. Kuyda says she’s not excited about internet hosting advertisements on the platform, which ends up in incentives that create darkish patterns.

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

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Acharya believes as soon as the community results take off, it is going to be straightforward to monetize. He sees a future the place there’s a professionalization ingredient that may occur on the platform, the place most of the children right this moment who need to be TikTok stars may as an alternative make software program on Wabi.

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

Acharya added that with there’s much more alternative with software program as a result of “video content material has decaying worth over time,” he mentioned. “Software program has compounding worth.” If anyone builds the following 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 mentioned. “The web has been this driving drive 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 Internet 3.0 appear to be when everybody can construct and share software program inside a couple of minutes?

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