Twelve years ago today, Eugenia Kuyda presented a conversational chatbot called IO at TechCrunch Disrupt. This chatbot acted as a lifestyle concierge, helping users book restaurants and vacations, among other tasks. At that time, IO was the first product from her startup Luka, predating the deep learning breakthroughs that led to today's large language models. Kuyda remarked, "It still worked. It was pretty magical…but, of course, it’s nowhere near what we have today."
Luka eventually evolved into Replika, a popular AI chatbot companion. Last year, Kuyda stepped down as CEO of Replika to found Wabi. The technology has now caught up with her original vision for Luka, just as Wabi enters a competitive landscape of new personal AI assistants like Muse and Instinct, which aim to manage tasks from inbox organization to finding the best flight deals.
On Monday, Kuyda officially launched Wabi for all users. This multiplayer personal AI assistant functions as a messenger app, allowing users to maintain multiple agentic threads dedicated to various tasks and long-term goals. Within each thread, users can build and utilize custom apps, such as a weight-loss tracker in a health thread or an app showcasing nearby children’s events in a family thread.
Evolution of Wabi
The launch marks a pivot for Wabi, which Kuyda describes as more of an evolution. When TechCrunch covered Wabi’s initial launch last year, it was characterized as a social platform for creating mini apps with prompts to share with friends. Over the past year, Kuyda's team realized that while users appreciate personal software over generic solutions, they may not want to invest much time in building it.
