Wabi raises $55 million at a $1.25 billion valuation

From app builder to AI messenger

Wabi originally let users create apps with prompts. Last month, it announced a change in direction; its new version, called Wabi 2.0, is meant to build interfaces for everyday tasks through a personal AI agent.

The proposed mini-apps include:

The shift is from making an app on request to putting an agent between users and a set of everyday tasks. That is a more ambitious product claim, but the examples remain familiar utilities rather than evidence of a new way to interact with AI.

Investors are backing the pivot

IVP led the round. Its general partner Alex Lim said Kuyda has a strong sense of where AI is heading and an ability to build products. He said she has a clear view of how people will interact with AI beyond text boxes and the command line, and that Wabi embodies that idea.

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Forerunner and Amazon Alexa Fund also participated. Angel investors included Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, former Yahoo! executive Marissa Mayer, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and Alex Pall of The Chainsmokers.

The funding comes as investors place bets across AI agents and companions. In September, viral AI agent Instinct raised another $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation. Tolan, which makes a doll-like AI companion to help people work through life questions, recently raised $30 million.

The interface is still the open question

My read is that Wabi’s valuation reflects confidence in Kuyda and in the idea that AI will move beyond chat, more than it reflects a product whose use is already clear. The announcement gives a list of tasks, but not much detail on how the agent decides what to build, or what makes its mini-apps more useful than asking a general-purpose chatbot for the same help.

That gap matters because Wabi has changed its positioning from app creation to an AI messenger in a short span. The central test is whether the new interface makes routine tasks easier to complete—or simply gives familiar chatbot requests a different wrapper.