Wabi raises $55M at a $1.25B valuation a month after its pivot

Felix Laurent 29 Oct 2026 3 min read

Funding

Wabi has raised $55 million at a $1.25 billion valuation. The startup belongs to Eugenia Kuyda, who founded the AI companion app Replika. IVP led the round, Bloomberg and the company's press release said on October 29. The money comes one month after Wabi dropped its "YouTube for apps" pitch and relaunched as a group AI assistant. We read the press release, TechCrunch's coverage and Wabi's own site. Wabi has not published a single user, retention or revenue figure.

What Wabi announced

The press release calls Wabi "a personal AI assistant built for life together." It combines an AI agent, mini-apps it builds on request and shared spaces. In those spaces several people talk to the same agent. Bloomberg describes software that helps groups "coordinate activities and make collective decisions" with AI agents.

The app runs on iOS, Android and Mac, and a Windows version is coming soon. Wabi says the money will go to "continued product development and expansion." No source says whether this is a Series A. None says whether $1.25 billion is the pre- or post-money valuation.

The valuation stands out mostly because of how new the current product is.

From an app store to a messenger

Wabi launched in beta in October 2025. Back then it was a social platform for mini-apps. Anyone could type a prompt, get an app and share it with friends. Kuyda called it a "YouTube for apps."

In November 2025 Wabi raised a $20 million pre-seed, and a16z says it led the round. Angels included Naval Ravikant, Garry Tan, Amjad Masad and Sarah Guo. TechCrunch tried the beta at the time. It found stale and unmaintained apps in the discovery feed.

Wabi 2.0 arrived on September 28, 2026. The company called it "a new kind of messenger that makes apps and gets things done for you and your friends." At first it was invite-only, with codes handed out on X. Kuyda explained the shift in her own post: "The more you use a chat-only agent, the worse the experience gets." In her version, the agent "does stuff for you and builds the interface you need in the moment."

So the app-building engine stayed. What changed is that the apps now appear inside a chat, and that chat can include other people.

What groups actually do in Wabi

The examples Wabi gives are domestic. A couple keeps a shared restaurant list and checks places off. A family meal plan turns into a grocery list. Friends make trivia games for a birthday or run a 30-day fitness challenge. A book club tracks what it reads.

Outside groups, the assistant books appointments, helps with homework and plans trips. Mini-apps stay in the thread, and people can change them later.

"So far, personal agents have been one person, one chat," Kuyda says in the release. "We think the future is your agent, your apps, and your people in one place."

The release does not describe how a group reaches a decision. Wabi has published no voting, polling or tie-breaking feature. The "collective decisions" pitch comes down to shared lists and apps in a group chat with an agent in it.

That gap matters more given who else wants to be your group assistant.

Who is betting on it

IVP led the round, and a16z, Forerunner and the Amazon Alexa Fund joined it. The angels include Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and Alex Pall of The Chainsmokers are in too. "She has a clear vision for how people will interact with AI, one that goes far beyond the text box or command line," IVP general partner Alex Lim said.

Investors are mostly backing Kuyda's record. She founded Replika in 2017, and TechCrunch put its user base at 35 million in 2025.

Consumer agents are getting expensive across the board. TechCrunch names two rivals. Instinct raised a $1 billion Series C at a $10 billion valuation in September. Tolan raised $30 million on October 19. OpenAI is moving into the same space too. At DevDay on September 29 it added app-like interfaces inside ChatGPT.

Is Wabi worth $1.25 billion yet?

Not on anything Wabi has shown. The group product has been public for about a month, with no users, retention or revenue disclosed. The feature behind the "collective decisions" pitch has not been described. IVP and a16z are paying for Kuyda's sense of what consumers want. They are also paying for a design that puts several people in one chat with one agent, not for proof that people use it that way. The next real signal will be the first usage number Wabi publishes.