The race to build the winning AI assistant is on, and investors are spreading out their bets. On Thursday, another AI app, Wabi, now describing itself as a “personal agent,” said it has raised $55 million at a $1.25 billion valuation.
Founded by Eugenia Kuyda, who previously founded the AI companion startup Replika, Wabi originally focused on allowing anyone to build apps using prompts. Last month, however, the startup announced a pivot of sorts to become an AI messenger.
The idea now is that the new Wabi — or Wabi 2.0, as it was called — could build the interfaces you need to get things done as part of its role as your personal AI agent.
The company suggests Wabi could be used to build mini apps for things like meal planning, tracking local restaurants, planning date nights, creating fitness plans, designing specialized trivia games, and more.
The additional funding indicates that Wabi’s investors agree that its new agentic angle has some potential, especially given the market around AI agents is hot right now, with viral AI agent Instinct pulling in another billion at a $10 billion valuation in September.
Even Tolan, which makes a cute, muppet-like AI companion to help people navigate life, just raised $30 million.
“Eugenia has a unique sense for where AI is headed and a track record of great taste in building it,” said Alex Lim, general partner at IVP, which led the new round, in a statement. “She has a clear vision for how people will interact with AI, one that goes far beyond the text box or command line. Wabi is the expression of that vision, and we’re thrilled to support her.”
Other participants in the round included Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Forerunner, Amazon Alexa Fund, and angel investors like Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, former Yahoo! head Marissa Mayer, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, and one half of The Chainsmokers, Alex Pall.
Source: techcrunch.com
