Eugenia Kuyda saw the future of consumer AI before most. She founded Replika, the first major AI companion startup, in 2017 years before ChatGPT launched. Today it has 35 million users.
Now Kuyda is back with a new startup called Wabi, which she describes as YouTube for apps – 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 harbinger of another consumer AI shift: one where personalized software becomes the norm.
Wabi has raised $20 million in pre-seed funding from a stellar list of angels, including 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.
“[Kuyda] was early and right to AI companions, even though it wasn’t obvious at the time,” Anish Acharya, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, told 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.”
Kuyda is entering a hot market. Vibe coding tools like Cursor and Lovable have attracted significant VC interest, while no-code AI platforms including Emergent, Replit, and Bloom are racing to let non-technical users build apps through prompts. Wabi’s difference: an integrated platform for creation, discovery, and hosting — no app store required.
Eugenia Kuyda, founder of Wabi and Replika Image Credits:Wabi
“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, who last week joined us on stage at Disrupt to discuss AI companions, told TechCrunch. “All you need to put in is ‘build me an AI therapy app,’ and that’s it. It will suggest features and you can brainstorm, but it’ll build you an app. You don’t need to be great at prompting. You never see the code.”
Earlier this week Wabi released certain social features to beta users – things like the ability to like, comment and remix any existing app, as well as check out user profiles to see what others liked, used, or built.
Techcrunch event Join the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector. Join the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector. San Francisco | WAITLIST NOW
X has been blowing up about Wabi since it started dishing out invites to select users. Several founders, designers, and investors from around the world have posted about Wabi’s ease of creating apps for themselves. Even Google DeepMind product lead Logan Kilpatrick gave Wabi a shout out.
... continue reading