The key facts
- Wabi 2.0 is now available to all users: a messenger featuring multiple agent threads and custom applications created automatically by the AI.
- Kuyda left her CEO role at Replika and founded Wabi last year; initially, Wabi was a social platform for creating mini-apps.
- Wabi competes with Muse and Instinct; the product is free, monetization is undecided, and funding negotiations are underway.
From IO at Disrupt to Wabi
Exactly 12 years ago, Eugenia Kuyda presented at TechCrunch Disrupt with a conversational chatbot named IO, the first product of her startup Luka, which functioned as a 'lifestyle concierge' helping users book restaurants and vacations and perform other tasks. This occurred before the breakthroughs in deep learning that led to today's large language models. 'It did work. It was quite magical... but, of course, not what we have today,' Kuyda told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. Later, Luka evolved into Replika, a popular company creating AI companions. Last year, Kuyda stepped down as CEO of Replika and founded Wabi. On October 7, 2026, she posted a launch video from 2015 on X, noting that she had been 'building personal agents 11 years ago.' According to her, technology has finally caught up with her original vision.
What is Wabi 2.0
On Monday, Kuyda officially opened Wabi to all users. It is a 'multiplayer' personal AI assistant operating as a messenger: users maintain multiple agent threads dedicated to different tasks and long-term goals. Within each thread, users can create and use custom applications—for example, a weight-loss tracker in a 'health' thread or an app for nearby children's events in a family thread.
Pivot or Evolution
The launch represents partly a course change: when TechCrunch covered Wabi's initial launch and its $20 million pre-seed round a year ago, the product was described as a social platform where users could create mini-apps via prompts and share them with friends. Over the year, according to Kuyda, the team realized that people prefer personal software over 'one-size-fits-all solutions from the App Store,' but they 'perhaps do not want to spend much time or any time at all creating it.' In Wabi 2.0, the agent itself decides to build applications: after connecting an email account, it automatically creates threads and apps, while users can add their own.
Differences from Competitors
'It does what Instinct and Muse do, but it has all these apps that help users do more,' Kuyda said. The second focus is multi-threading and multiplayer functionality: 'It's not all in one thread like Instinct and Muse, where you get buried under the information it sends every day. A single thread gets worse over time because one endless conversation contains too much context.' According to TechCrunch citing interviews with AI researchers, the longer the dialogue with a chatbot, the higher the likelihood of hallucinations, loss of context, or responses usually blocked by safety mechanisms. Threads can be shared and function like group chats. 'Today, all agent apps are conversations only between you and the agent, but I think it should be more about bringing people together in a group chat... I don't think anyone has cracked multiplayer yet,' Kuyda noted.
Personal Experience and Privacy
Kuyda showed TechCrunch her shared threads: with her partner—a live music tracker, a daily question about their relationship, a restaurant list, events from a shared calendar, and a list of books read together; in a family thread—her daughter's schedule, a search for children's events, and a Japanese language trainer app. In any shared chat, users can share data at their discretion, ranging from email and calendar to bank details. 'My partner can ask Wabi in the chat:
Monetization and Funding
'My previous company Replika worked on AI that would help people feel... less lonely. To some extent, this is also present in Wabi. AI can bring people together—even just by helping them spend more time together in real life,' Kuyda said. For now, Wabi is free, and the business model has not been selected. Kuyda reported that the company is in negotiations to raise additional funds.
