Wabi, the AI app builder, pivots to a messaging experience

Wabi, the AI startup that let anyone build apps with prompts, is shifting direction. The company announced this week that its product is becoming an AI messenger, while keeping the ability to make apps. The move comes as demand for personal AI agents, such as Meta's Muse and Instinct, grows.

What Wabi 2.0 is

Founder Eugenia Kuyda, who previously founded the AI companion startup Replika, called the new version, Wabi 2.0, “a personal agent that does stuff for you and builds the interface you need in the moment.” In a post on X, the company described it as “a new kind of messenger that makes apps and gets things done for you and your friends” and pitched it as software for the “agentic era.”

When a user asks the agent to complete a task, it can build the interface on demand. In a thread about health, for example, Kuyda suggested people could create a calorie tracker, a weightlifting log and a weight tracker, while a family-focused thread could hold a calendar of the kids' activities, a language-learning app, or an app that tracks local kid-friendly events.

Why a messenger, not just a chat

Kuyda argues that a chat-only agent gets worse the more you use it, because history and ongoing tasks end up buried in one endless scroll. “People don't just want to type-type-type; they want to tap-tap-tap, scroll, and look. They love what agents can do, but they also like software,” she wrote. “The most powerful agent will be the one that combines both.”

That reframes the competition. Rather than facing other vibe-coding tools, Wabi 2.0 now targets AI agents that merge conversation and productivity in a single interface. It lands as OpenAI and others rethink how apps live inside general-purpose chatbots: at its Dev Day, OpenAI announced an update to ChatGPT's plugins, letting apps offer interactive experiences inside ChatGPT and pinning the app's name in a more visible spot on the sidebar.

Availability

Wabi 2.0 is currently invite-only, with invite codes handed out on X. Wabi raised a $20 million pre-seed in November 2025, when it was pitched as “the YouTube of apps.”