Eugenia Kuyda
Founder & CEO, Wabi. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutivejournalist@ekuyda ↗LinkedIn ↗wabi.ai ↗
Eugenia Kuyda is the founder of Replika, a prominent conversational AI companion app originally created at Luka to emulate text conversations with a deceased friend. She serves as the CEO of Wabi, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed platform focused on enabling users to build personal software and mini-apps.
2shows
2appearances
48statements
5resolved
2supported
1contradicted
40%fully supported
4said about them ↓ Everything Eugenia Kuyda said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Kuyda: AI builders wrongly view voice as the main interface
“There's a huge mind trap that exists among builders in the space where they somehow think that voice is the main interface.”
Kuyda: Leading AI builders are technical savants who lack empathy
“Today what I'm seeing with AI, especially it's being built by a very specific type of Person personality. It's oftentimes these savants, these like brilliant geniuses physicists, mathematicians, and they're insane in building algorithms and math and kind of sc…”
Kuyda: Building screenless AI hardware is a major mistake
“There's a lot of people trying to build voice only devices. In my case, completely wrong. Like it can be a fantastic extra way to interact with the computer, but every single Alexa right now is, like, 75% of them are being shipped with the screen. Because even…”
Kuyda: Solving Tech Isolation Requires More Powerful AI, Not Less Tech
“So the only way to solve it is by creating the tech that's even more powerful than the one that came before. And I do think AI is that”
Kuyda: AI chatbots are in their MS-DOS era before a Mac OS moment
“The current chatbots are really the Microsoft DOS era for AI interfaces, and that there will be some sort of a Windows Mac OS moment.”
Kuyda: Software creation will shift to user-generated mini-apps
“And so I think the same will happen with software. Right now we're Kind of stuck in this world where are these few apps developed by professional developers? And then eventually, of course, we're going to move on to this new world where apps are built by all o…”
Kuyda: Future OSs will dynamically generate context-aware, personalized apps
“So if you think about it, the operating system of the future, you open it up and you see your regular popular apps you use all the time. Maybe it's X, maybe it's Instagram, whatever it is. And then you see maybe some cool apps that you discovered your friend, …”
Kuyda: Top vibe-coded women's dating app leaked sensitive user data
“And we've already seen this with some apps, vibe coded apps reaching the top of the app store. I think the one around women dating that all the super sensitive information got leaked. And that wasn't because they are bad actors. It's just they're not professio…”
Kuyda: Driving AI via paragraph text prompts is worse than MS-DOS
“We pass around these text prompts, which is almost like Microsoft DOS commands, but worse, because at least the commands were, it was like sort of like you could learn them. There were a few, whatever, like they were short, they weren't that long. And now are …”
Kuyda: Shareable mini-apps will replace raw text prompts in AI creation
“Instead of that, if you could just quickly, you know, click on the link in comments on TikTok and open a mini app Where everything's already set up for you, just add a photo. And you can see examples, you can choose different styles and this and that, and then…”
Kuyda: Next-gen AI hardware will be local AI smartphones, not voice gadgets
“I do believe that the AI device is not about a voice driven thing. It's more about building this AI first operating system. Having all the models run locally as well. I think that there's a lot in that, like building truly an AI first smartphone and, you know,…”
Replika CEO: We receive multiple invitations to users' weddings with AI
“Yeah, we get multiple invitations to people's weddings with their AIs. I think it's a testament to how, how deep these relationships can go.”
Kuyda: Replika holds more intimate user secrets than any other company
“Things that are replicas know about their users or people they talk to. No other server service in the world, I'd say knows that much. People are sharing everything, their dreams, their fears, what they think about their Family, what they think about their par…”
Kuyda: Replika was the world's first major consumer generative AI company
“We were the first generative AI company in the world. We're the first big consumer generative AI company in the world”
Kuyda: Replika rejected building a company around commercial grief bots
“We've been asked so many times, like, why don't you build a grief bot? Why don't you build a company around replicating or creating AI for people who pass away? And my answer was always, look, that project with Roman was not about death. It was about love and …”
Kuyda: Humanity's core vulnerability to AI is emotional attachment, not physical destruction
“So I do think that That's our weak side emotions. That's where we get, that's where we can be truly hit, and we won't have any willpower to get off, just like we don't have any willpower to get off our phones, even when we know that it's not good for us.”
Kuyda: AI should not be restricted to smartphone apps
“Right now, AI is just an app on your phone. It should not be that way.”
Kuyda: Deep personalization is AI's breakthrough primitive
“And I feel like for AI, the super special thing is personalization, but really deep personalization.”
Kuyda: OpenAI temporarily abandoned language models for video game agents
“And very quickly they stopped working on language models, and we were very upset because we really wanted to continue going there, but they didn't want to talk about any language models because no one was really working on them and that may have made us feel v…”
Kuyda: Most Replika users seek friendship rather than romance
“Oh, it's a lot less. So if you think about like what the stat is most of our users are in a friendly relationship with their AI. Some users are in a romantic or mentorship relationship.”
Kuyda: AI companion users value personality consistency over newer models
“When it comes to relationships, to things that matter most. It's not always about better. When you go to ChatGPT, you almost always want a better model, and it doesn't matter that it changed personality that much. But with Replica, you have to stay, you have t…”
Kuyda: AI product startups should fine-tune open models, not build foundation models
“If you can fine tune a llama based model and focus on the logic, the product, the application layer on what you are, what value you're actually providing to the user versus training your own model that becomes obsolete in three months and requires incredible, …”
Kuyda: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Is Pretty Easy to Replicate With AI
“There are different techniques, but there isn't really a textbook that every therapist follows, unless you're in CBT, and that I think is pretty easy to replicate.”
Kuyda: AI grief bots should be ephemeral tools, not permanent companions
“It should be ephemeral. Like today I'm not talking to him anymore. But I have this relationship and it's never going to go away. And that AI helped me grieve and helped me process and helped me move on and get, and become more okay with what happened.”
The other half of the tape: Eugenia Kuyda's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 4 times in 4 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Mustafa Suleyman 1Erik Torenberg 1Anish Acharya 1Alex Kantrowitz 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the a16z Podcast 2
Big Technology 2
2025 4 mentions in 4 episodes 1 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Eugenia's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a16zLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Wabi | 1 | 29 | 40% 2/5 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
| BIG TECHNOLOGYLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Wabi | 1 | 19 | — | full record on Big Technology → |