Seeing The Future from AI Companions to Personal Software

The a16z Show

a16z

Science, Innovation, Business, Entrepreneurship, Culture, Disruption, Software Eating The World, Technology

4.4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Eugenia Kuyda, CEO of Wabi and AI pioneer behind Replika, joins Erik, Anish, and Justine to reveal how personal software will transform from a developer monopoly to a creative medium for all. She exposes why command-line AI interfaces are the new MS-DOS, explains how mini-apps will become as shareable as TikToks, and details her decade-long journey from training language models in 2012 to building the platform where your mom can create custom apps in minutes. Plus: untold stories from OpenAI's apartment days and why voice-only devices completely miss the point.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Right now, AI is just an app on your phone.
0:02.3	It should not be that way.
0:03.6	Sometimes you need to sort of go big or go home.
0:06.0	Not having the balls to do that,
0:07.5	especially in this current environment,
0:09.1	you can suffer the consequences.
0:12.0	There's a huge mind trap that exists among builders in the space,
0:16.5	where they somehow think that voice is the main interface.
0:19.5	That's because they are somehow thinking about the movie her all the time, but not in the right way.
0:24.9	So you were true pioneer in the space before everyone else was doing it.
0:28.7	Maybe just talk about your reflections of how that category as you helped create it and then how it's evolved.
0:34.6	It definitely evolved.
0:36.6	I have noticed.
0:38.7	It's pretty crazy.
0:40.5	We had a very strong belief that it would happen,
0:43.2	but we still were so surprised when it actually happened, I guess.
0:48.0	It just still felt like complete magic.
0:51.7	Personal software is about to explode from 20 million developers to 8 billion creators.
0:57.0	Today you'll hear from Eugenie Ekoida on how Wabi is building the YouTube of apps,
1:01.0	where anyone can create, remix, and share software as easily as posting a video.
1:06.0	We discuss why current AI interfaces are holding us back,
1:09.0	how many apps will become the new social
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from a16z, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of a16z and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.