Eugenia Kuyda's AI Startup Wabi Secures $55 Million at $1.25 Billion Valuation
Artificial intelligence personal agent developer Wabi announced $55 million in new funding at a $1.25 billion valuation on October 29, 2026, according to reporting by TechCrunch and BBN Times. The financing round was led by venture capital firm IVP, with participation from existing backer Andreessen Horowitz, Forerunner Ventures, and the Amazon Alexa Fund. A roster of individual tech leaders also participated as angel investors, including Shopify Chief Executive Tobi Lutke, Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff, former Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer, former Twitter head Dick Costolo, and Alex Pall of music duo The Chainsmokers.
Founder Trajectory and Venture Backing
Wabi was established by entrepreneur Eugenia Kuyda, who previously created the conversational AI companion application Replika, a platform that attracted more than 40 million registered users. Kuyda stepped down from the chief executive role at Replika in 2025 to pursue agentic software development, initially securing a $20 million pre-seed round backed by Andreessen Horowitz alongside angel investors Naval Ravikant and Garry Tan. While the company originally positioned its product as an open creation environment for software generated via natural language prompts, the founding team initiated an architectural transformation in late September 2026 to address evolving consumer preferences.
Wabi is available for download on iOS, Android, and Mac, with a Windows version coming soon, according to PR Newswire.
Wabi remains entirely free to use and does not yet have a finalized monetization model, according to CryptoBriefing.
Wabi has raised a total of $75 million across two funding rounds in approximately 11 months, according to CryptoBriefing.
Wabi closed its pre-seed funding round in November 2025.
Architectural Transformation to Wabi 2.0
Under the revised product structure designated Wabi 2.0, the startup transformed its core client into an AI messenger that generates bespoke interactive interfaces inside conversational threads. Users organize activities across specialized conversations dedicated to personal domains such as fitness schedules, family logistics, local restaurant discovery, or specialized entertainment trivia. Rather than confining users to repetitive text boxes, the platform allows the autonomous agent to assemble dedicated functional mini-apps that participants can navigate through visual controls. The software also incorporates multiplayer capability, enabling groups of collaborators or family members to interact simultaneously within shared operational threads.
Agentic Competition and Infrastructure Scaling
The fundraising places Wabi among venture-backed companies developing AI assistants, although its consumer adoption and commercial model remain unproven. Highlighting the investment thesis, IVP general partner Alex Lim observed that Kuyda possesses a plan to develop graphical applications through conversational instructions. The mobile application is presently distributed on an invite-code model to manage computational infrastructure expenses as engineering teams refine server capacity. Company leadership plans to direct the fresh capital toward scaling infrastructure and expanding engineering operations to support mainstream deployment.