Wabi Raises $55M at $1.25B Valuation: Life OS Bet

Wabi raises $55M in a Series A round that values the personal AI startup at $1.25 billion. IVP led the deal, and the announcement comes just ten days after the Wabi app opened to the public on iPhone, Android and Mac.

Wabi describes itself as a personal AI assistant built for life together. The startup says the new funding will pay for continued product development and expansion, and it wants the Wabi app to grow into an operating system for everyday life, where a person’s friends, family, tools and AI agent work in one place.

Wabi Raises $55M: Who Invested in the Series A?

IVP led the AI startup funding round. Besides IVP, the investor list includes Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Forerunner and the Amazon Alexa Fund. A group of well-known founders and executives also wrote checks as angels: Shopify chief Tobi Lütke, Salesforce chief Marc Benioff, former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and Alex Pall.

IVP general partner Alex Lim said founder Eugenia Kuyda has a strong sense of where AI is heading and has a clear idea of how people will use it, far beyond a text box or command line. Anish Acharya, a general partner at a16z, called Wabi a thoughtful bet in a fast-moving market. His firm led the startup’s $20 million pre-seed round in November 2025, so the Series A is a second big vote of confidence from a16z.

What Is the Wabi App? A Multiplayer Personal AI Assistant

Wabi works like a messenger with a personal AI agent inside it. Users chat with the agent, add the people in their lives to the conversation, and let the agent plan, remind, book and coordinate. Most AI assistants serve one person typing into one chat. Wabi targets couples, families, friends, book clubs and running groups instead, which the company calls “multiplayer” AI.

The Wabi AI product has three main parts:

• A proactive AI agent that notices what a group needs, builds plans and keeps things moving without long prompts.
• Personalized mini-apps that the agent creates on request, such as a shared restaurant list, a weekly meal plan that turns into a grocery list, a book club tracker or a trivia game for a birthday.
• Shared spaces where several people use the same AI agent together and keep everything in one thread.

The assistant also handles everyday chores, from coordinating family schedules and helping children with homework to booking appointments and planning trips.

How People Use Wabi Since the Public Launch

Early users have found plenty of creative uses. Friends have used Wabi to discover new bands based on shared music taste, run 30-day fitness challenges and check in on each other during hard times. Couples have asked it to plan date nights. Individuals have built routines around personal goals, and some have used it for step-by-step guidance after a breakup.

Kuyda has also shown how she runs her own life in the app. She keeps separate chats for areas such as health and her children, with trackers, schedules and small custom apps living inside each conversation. That setup shows the idea behind the product: one agent, many shared spaces.

Eugenia Kuyda: The Replika Founder Behind Wabi

Eugenia Kuyda founded Wabi and serves as its CEO. She earlier created Replika, one of the best-known AI companion apps, which gave her years of experience in how people form bonds with AI. With Wabi, she points that experience in a new direction: helping people connect with each other, with AI as the helper in the room.

In her view, AI should do more than save time. It should help people spend that time better, doing more of what they love with the people they love, and it should help them pursue goals, find new experiences and show up for one another.

Wabi Timeline: From Pre-Seed to a $1.25 Billion Valuation

• November 5, 2025Wabi announces a $20 million pre-seed round led by a16z, pitching a “YouTube for apps” where users create mini-apps by prompting.
• September 28, 2026Kuyda unveils Wabi 2.0, a messaging-style personal agent that builds the interface a user needs on the spot.
• October 19, 2026The Wabi app opens for public download on iOS, Android and Mac after a gradual rollout.
• October 29, 2026Wabi raises $55M in a Series A at a $1.25 billion valuation, led by IVP.

Why the Wabi Series A Matters for AI Startup Funding in 2026

The deal lands in a busy year for AI startup funding. Investors are placing huge bets on the biggest labs and on focused consumer and business apps alike. A $1.25 billion valuation within days of a public launch signals strong early demand, and it shows that backers believe the next wave of AI will happen between people, not only between one person and a chatbot.

The challenge ahead is retention. Wabi must prove that shared AI spaces become a daily habit for groups of friends and families, and that its mini-apps keep people coming back. The company also needs to scale its apps, including the promised Windows version, while competing with big assistants from larger tech firms.

This article reflects publicly announced details as of October 29, 2026.