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.
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