On October 29, 2026, personal AI assistant Wabi announced a $55 million funding round at a $1.25 billion valuation. The round was led by IVP, with Andreessen Horowitz, Forerunner and the Amazon Alexa Fund participating, and angel investors including Tobi Lütke, Marc Benioff and Marissa Mayer. It is Wabi's second round after a $20 million pre-seed in November 2025, and the announcement says it followed the product's public launch and strong early demand.
Wabi was founded by Replika founder Eugenia Kuyda and began as a tool for building apps from prompts. In late September 2026, with Wabi 2.0, the company pivoted to a personal agent and AI messenger: the agent no longer stays in a one-to-one chat, but joins group chats and shared spaces, generating mini-apps on demand in conversation to help a group coordinate dates, trips, fitness plans or a book club.
The bet is on using it together, not chatting alone
Wabi's argument is that most assistants are designed for one person, while many everyday plans are made by several people together. The announcement's examples include friends discovering bands from shared taste, couples planning a date night, and families sharing household tasks. The agent, mini-apps and shared spaces sit in one product, with the aim of letting AI take part in coordination rather than merely answering questions.
The valuation is running ahead of proof
One point deserves a cooler look: the announcement disclosed no user, retention or revenue figures, and the public launch was recent. The $1.25 billion valuation is mostly a price put on the founder's track record and on the personal-agent category: Kuyda's earlier company, Replika, gathered tens of millions of users, and she founded Wabi after stepping down as Replika's chief executive in early 2025.
For ordinary users, the figure that matters is not the funding amount, but whether Wabi 2.0 works well in real group chats: whether mini-apps appear when needed, whether they interrupt the conversation, and whether group members are willing to hand plans to a shared agent. Those answers will only come once more people have actually used it.
