AI-powered app maker Wabi pivots to a messaging experience

Wabi, the AI startup that allowed anyone to use prompts to build apps, is undergoing a slight pivot as demand for AI agents, like Meta’s Muse and Instinct, takes off. The company announced this week that Wabi is now becoming an AI messenger of sorts — but one that’s still capable of making apps to help you get things done.

The startup’s founder Eugenia Kuyda, who previously founded the AI companion startup Replika, described Wabi 2.0, as the new experience is called, as a “personal agent that does stuff for you and builds the interface you need in the moment.”

It’s a similar value proposition to that offered by the original version of Wabi — but one that users will interact with in a different way. Instead of positioning itself up against other vibe-coding tools, Wabi 2.0 aims to compete more directly with AI agents that combine both conversations and productivity tasks in a single interface.

It also comes as companies like OpenAI and others are thinking about how apps will work inside their more generalized chatbot user interfaces; for instance, OpenAI today announced at its Dev Day an update to ChatGPT’s plugins, which will allow apps to offer interactive experiences within ChatGPT, and where the app’s name gets pinned in a more visible spot on ChatGPT’s sidebar.