Wabi, the startup founded by Replika creator Eugenia Kuyda, said Thursday, Oct. 29, that it has raised $55 million at a $1.25 billion valuation, TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez reported. Venture firm IVP led the round.
The money comes a month after Wabi changed what it is. The company started as a tool that let anyone build small apps by typing a prompt. In late September it relaunched as what Kuyda calls a personal agent, an AI that carries out tasks for a user and builds the screens it needs along the way.
Kuyda described the new version, Wabi 2.0, as a “personal agent that does stuff for you and builds the interface you need in the moment,” according to TechCrunch’s Sept. 29 report on the change. At that point the app was available only by invite code.
How the app works
Wabi looks like a messaging app. Users keep separate threads for different parts of life, such as health or family, and can invite other people into a thread. Inside each one, the agent builds mini apps, for example a weight tracker in a health thread or a calendar of children’s activities in a family thread.
Kuyda explained the reasoning on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast with Rebecca Bellan. “What we learned is that even although people love personal software, they don’t necessarily always want to build it,” she said. Under the new version, the agent decides what to build once a user connects an email account, and the user can change it or ask for something else.
Wabi opened to all users on Oct. 19, according to a separate TechCrunch profile. That piece reported that Wabi is free for now and hasn’t settled on a business model. It also said the company is SOC 2 compliant, meaning an outside auditor has reviewed its security controls, and that it stores most user data in the U.S.
Who’s backing it
“Eugenia has a unique sense for where AI is headed and a track record of great taste in building it,” IVP general partner Alex Lim said in a statement quoted by TechCrunch.
Andreessen Horowitz, Forerunner and the Amazon Alexa Fund also took part, TechCrunch reported. Angel investors include Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, former Yahoo head Marissa Mayer, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and Alex Pall of The Chainsmokers.
The round lands in a crowded field. Perez pointed to Instinct, which TechCrunch reported raised another $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation in September, and to Tolan, a maker of an AI companion that recently raised $30 million. Meta’s Muse is also chasing the personal-agent market.
Kuyda says Wabi’s difference is that it’s built for groups. In the Oct. 19 profile, she said it’s “doing what Instinct and Muse do, but it also has all these apps, which helps users do more stuff.”
Kuyda left the CEO job at Replika, the AI companion company she founded, last year to start Wabi, according to TechCrunch. The Oct. 19 profile noted that she pitched an AI assistant at TechCrunch Disrupt 12 years ago under the name Luka, the company that later became Replika.
Wabi hasn’t said how it will spend the new money.
Source: TechCrunch, Sarah Perez, “Wabi, the AI agent that builds mini apps, now valued at $1.25B after latest round”
Additional sources: TechCrunch, Sarah Perez, “AI-powered app maker Wabi pivots to a messaging experience”; TechCrunch, “Replika's founder built the AI assistant she pitched at Disrupt 12 years ago”; TechCrunch Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan, “Meta and Instinct are racing to build your AI assistant. Wabi has a different idea.”
