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 the moment it has 35 million customers.  

Now Kuyda is again with a brand new startup known 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 buddies. Wabi, which launched in beta final month, is a harbinger of one other shopper AI shift: one the place customized software program turns into the norm. 

Wabi has raised $20 million in pre-seed funding from a stellar checklist 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 optimization, and Conviction founder Sarah Guo. 

“[Kuyda] was early and right to AI companions, despite the fact that it wasn’t apparent on the time,” Anish Acharya, basic companion at Andreessen Horowitz, advised TechCrunch. “It’s very uncommon to search out somebody who’s bought a observe report for predicting what customers will need, and we predict she’s doing it once more.” 

Kuyda is coming into a sizzling 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 means of prompts. Wabi’s distinction: an built-in platform for creation, discovery, and internet hosting — no app retailer required. 

“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 each day lives,” Kuyda, who final week joined us on stage at Disrupt to debate AI companions, advised TechCrunch. “All it is advisable put in is ‘construct me an AI remedy app,’ and that’s it. It is going to counsel options and you’ll brainstorm, however it’ll construct you an app. You don’t must 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 power to love, remark and remix any current app, in addition to take a look at consumer profiles to see what others preferred, used, or constructed. 

X has been blowing up about Wabi since it began meting out invitations to pick out customers. A number of founders, designers, and investors from around 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’ll be able to immediately see what apps your mates are creating, loving, and remixing pic.twitter.com/tfjltyZApv

— wabi (@wabi) November 3, 2025

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

Wabi’s Discover web page presently options latest and widespread apps, although Kuyda stated it is going to turn into extra algorithmic over time. The startup plans to launch customized onboarding within the coming weeks, robotically producing starter apps for brand spanking 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 might clear up small issues for you. Apps like Wabi have been capable of package deal this promise nicely by way of clients not having to arrange any technical infrastructure. Even in the event you enter just a few sentences, Wabi handles issues like creating an icon or establishing databases, and deciding what the UI of the app would appear like.  

Kuyda advised 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 wish to use ChatGPT or Gemini) and even rewrite the prompts that Wabi comes up with. 

Making a fundamental app is easy. Nevertheless, you may have to debug the app to keep away from errors, which is to be anticipated in a improvement life cycle.  

For instance, we created an app that confirmed us a canine image daily with a canine reality. After just a few days of utilization, we realized the app was producing the identical set of canines. Once we noticed one other consumer’s each day information app, all of the dates talked about on the abstract photographs had been October 1, 2023, whereas the information gadgets 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 quite a lot 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 figuring out how to make sure that apps are able to exit of the field. She famous that there are nonetheless mannequin constraints that are enhancing daily. She says an enormous chunk of the $20 million will go in direction of constructing out Wabi’s product crew. 

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

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

Acharya believes as soon as the community results take off, it is going to be simple to monetize. He sees a future the place there’s a professionalization component that may occur on the platform, the place lots of the youngsters immediately who wish to be TikTok stars may as a substitute make software program on Wabi.  

“You concentrate on the historical past of YouTube, it began out as individuals placing these shaky, low funds content material experiences,” he stated. “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 stated. “Software program has compounding worth.” If any person builds the following hit app, it’ll proceed to be related over the course of time.

The concept suits 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 feel software program is the ultimate frontier of participation,” Acharya stated. “The web has been this driving pressure for participation…the place anybody can put up their ideas. It’s sort 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 like when everybody can construct and share software program inside a couple of minutes? 

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