Wabi said Thursday it raised $55M at a $1.25B valuation, roughly a month after changing what it is.
The startup was founded by Eugenia Kuyda, who previously started the companion app Replika. Wabi began as a way to build small apps from a prompt. In September it repositioned as a personal agent living in a messaging interface, assembling the little screens it needs as a conversation goes.
That shift put it into a crowded room. Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s Dots and Anthropic’s Claude all want the same slot on a user’s home screen, and all arrived with distribution Wabi does not have.
The mini-app angle is the differentiator: instead of a chat that produces text, Wabi builds throwaway interfaces for booking, splitting a bill or tracking a delivery, then discards them. The company’s own examples run from meal planning and tracking local restaurants to fitness plans and trivia games.
IVP led the round, and general partner Alex Lim argued the founder has a clear vision for interaction that goes well beyond a text box. Andreessen Horowitz, Forerunner and the Amazon Alexa Fund joined, along with angels including Shopify’s Tobi Lutke, Salesforce’s Marc Benioff, Marissa Mayer and Dick Costolo.
Investors are spreading bets across assistant formats precisely because nobody knows which shape wins. A unicorn valuation on a pivot is a wager on the founder more than the product.
The round lands the same week banks began warning customers not to hand account credentials to agents, a reminder that the category’s growth and its risk profile are the same story.
