Eugenia Kuyda saw the future of consumer AI before most people. She founded Replika, the first major AI companion startup, in 2017, years before ChatGPT launched. Today it has thirty-five million users. Now Kuyda is back with a new startup called Wabi, which she describes as YouTube for apps. It is a social platform where anyone can use prompts to instantly create mini apps and share them with friends. Wabi, which launched in beta last month, is a sign of another consumer AI shift, one where personalized software becomes the norm.
Wabi has raised twenty million dollars in pre-seed funding from a notable list of angel investors. This group includes 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 Seo, and Conviction founder Sarah Guo. Anish Acharya, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, told TechCrunch that Kuyda was early and right about AI companions, even though it was not obvious at the time. He said it is very rare to find someone with a track record for predicting what consumers will want, and he believes she is doing it again.
Kuyda is entering a competitive market. Vibe coding tools like Cursor and Lovable have attracted significant venture capital interest. Meanwhile, no-code AI platforms including Emergent, Replit, and Bloom are racing to let non-technical users build apps through prompts. Wabi’s difference is that it offers an integrated platform for creation, discovery, and hosting, with no app store required.
Eugenia Kuyda explained that Wabi was made to help people who have nothing to do with coding or the tech world to very quickly create apps from their daily lives. All a user needs to do is type a request, such as build me an AI therapy app, and Wabi will handle the rest. It suggests features and builds the app, and the user never sees the code. You do not need to be great at prompting.
Earlier this week Wabi released new social features to beta users. These include the ability to like, comment on, and remix any existing app. Users can also check out profiles to see what others have liked, used, or built. Since it started sending invites to select users, Wabi has generated significant discussion online. Several founders, designers, and investors from around the world have posted about how easy it is to create apps for themselves. Even Google DeepMind product lead Logan Kilpatrick gave Wabi a public endorsement.
Kuyda said the social layer is absolutely critical because it allows for more creativity and discovery. She noted that these mini apps become community starters or conversation starters. Wabi’s Explore page currently features recent and popular apps, though Kuyda said it will become more algorithmic over time. The startup plans to launch personalized onboarding in the coming weeks, which will automatically generate starter apps for new users.
Wabi’s core promise is similar to that of the ChatGPT GPT store or Quora’s Poe. It allows users to build mini apps using prompts that solve small problems. Apps like Wabi package this promise well so customers do not have to set up any technical infrastructure. Even if you only enter a few sentences, Wabi handles tasks like creating an icon, setting up databases, and deciding what the user interface will look like.
Kuyda also told TechCrunch that for apps requiring AI-generated content, users can open the settings to choose their foundational model, such as ChatGPT or Gemini. They can even rewrite the prompts that Wabi generates. Creating a basic app is simple. However, you might need to debug the app to avoid errors, which is expected in any development life cycle.
For example, one test involved creating an app that showed a dog picture every day with a dog fact. After a few days, it became clear the app was generating the same set of dogs. Another user’s daily news app had summary photos all dated October 1, 2023, while the news items were only a few weeks old. Oddly, one of the news sources was Wikipedia. The responsibility is on the user to maintain the apps; otherwise, the discovery section could fill with unmanaged mini apps.
Kuyda says it is still early for Wabi and they are working on ensuring apps are ready to use right away. She noted there are still model constraints that improve every day. A large part of the twenty million dollars in funding will go toward building out Wabi’s product team. Some funds will also subsidize the use of Wabi until the startup figures out a monetization model. Kuyda says she is not interested in hosting ads on the platform, as she believes they create a bad user experience and dark patterns. She stated that she built Replika without any ads because she likes creating delightful user experiences.
Anish Acharya believes that once network effects take off, it will be easy to monetize. He sees a future where a professionalization element emerges on the platform. He imagines that many of the kids who today want to be TikTok stars might instead make software on Wabi. He compared it to the history of YouTube, which started with shaky, low-budget content and now, twenty years later, features super high production value. He added that there is even more opportunity with software because video content has decaying value over time, while software has compounding value. If somebody builds the next hit app, it will continue to be relevant.
This idea fits neatly into Acharya’s thesis on the future of disposable software. This refers to small, flexible apps that people can create and discard as easily as opening a new tab or having a quick chat with ChatGPT. Acharya said he thinks software is the final frontier of participation. The internet has been a driving force for participation where anyone can post their thoughts. He finds it strange that the internet is all software, yet so few people have been able to make it.
So what does a Web 3.0 look like when everyone can build and share software within a few minutes? Acharya feels the internet has gotten clinical, with everyone using the same Instagram, the same TikTok, and the same home screens. He believes apps have become pretty monotone. He sees the opportunity with Wabi as a chance to restore some of that punk, strange, early 1990s web ethos.