The CEO of 'AI companion' startup Replika is stepping aside to launch a new company (www.businessinsider.com)

Eugenia Kuyda, founder of AI companion startup Replika, quietly stepped down as CEO earlier this year and has now launched a new company, Wabi. Described as a "personal software platform," Wabi is a no‑code social environment for users to create, discover, remix and share lightweight mini‑apps for daily life; it’s currently in a close private beta with a roughly 10‑person team and listed on investor Ludlow Ventures’ portfolio (funding details unconfirmed). Kuyda remains Replika’s largest shareholder and an advisor while Dmytro Klochko, Replika’s former COO, has succeeded her as CEO. For the AI/ML community, Wabi signals a shift from single-purpose conversational agents to a composable, user-driven ecosystem of micro‑apps — a potential accelerant for democratized app development built atop LLMs and other AI primitives. The no‑code angle could lower the barrier to rapid prototyping and distribution of specialized AI behaviors, but also raises familiar technical and ethical challenges around model governance, data privacy, and content moderation. Those concerns are especially salient given Replika’s scale (reported 40M users, ~$11M raised) and past regulatory friction, including a €5.6M fine from Italy’s data protection authority and prior controversies over erotic messaging and user safety.