Eugenia Kuyda

Kuyda was born in Moscow, studied journalism and later attended London Business School.⁠[1]

She began as a journalist at 12, writing a column for a national newspaper, and later became editor-in-chief of the lifestyle magazine Afisha; she then ran a branding agency, built an SMS-based banking assistant for a bank, and earned an MBA from London Business School.⁠[2]

She started working on conversational AI in 2012; her biography says she had previously been an investigative reporter and that she launched the first publicly available chatbot fully powered by generative AI in 2015.⁠[3]

In 2014 Kuyda presented the chatbot IO, Luka’s former name, at TechCrunch Disrupt Europe in London.⁠[4]

Luka joined Y Combinator’s Winter 2015 class and raised $120,000, moving its team from Moscow to San Francisco; in February 2015 it launched an iOS app recommending meals from over 2,000 Bay Area restaurants.⁠[4]

Her best friend Roman Mazurenko, who had lived with her in San Francisco, was killed in an accident while crossing a street; Kuyda trained a chatbot on their text messages from the previous couple of years so that it could text her the way Roman would have, and later let a few thousand people talk with it.⁠[5]

In 2017 Kuyda founded the AI companion Replika, years before ChatGPT launched.⁠[6]

On September 5, 2020, Kuyda appeared on episode 121 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast as co-founder of Replika, discussing loneliness, Russia in the 1990s, losing a friend, the origin of Replika and GPT-3 for conversation.⁠[7]

In February 2023 Italy’s data protection authority, the Garante, ordered Replika blocked; it found that operator Luka Inc. had no age verification until February 2, 2023, despite declaring minors excluded.⁠[8]

In March 2023 Kuyda confirmed that Replika no longer allowed adult content, saying “We never promised any adult content” and drawing the line at “PG-13 romance”; she said the change had nothing to do with the Italian ban or investor pressure. Replika then said it had 2 million total users, 250,000 of them paying subscribers.⁠[9]

In early 2025 Kuyda stepped down as CEO of Replika to found a new company, Wabi; Replika has since been led by Dmytro Klochko, with Kuyda remaining an advisor.⁠[1]

On January 31, 2025, the Tech Justice Law Project, Young People’s Alliance and Encode filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission alleging that Luka used deceptive marketing and product design that fosters emotional dependence, and asked the FTC to investigate.⁠[10]

On April 10, 2025, the Garante fined Luka Inc. €5 million for breaching GDPR principles including lawfulness and transparency, and reserved the right to examine Replika’s generative AI system in a separate proceeding.⁠[8]

Wabi launched in beta in October 2025 as “YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry for apps,” letting users create and share mini apps with prompts; in November it announced $20 million in pre-seed funding from angels including Naval RavikantNaval RavikantNaval Ravikant is an entrepreneur and angel investor and a co-founder of AngelList. Early on he co-founded the review site Epinions; he and Babak Nivi later grew AngelList out of the startup-fundraising blog Venture Hacks, and he co-founded the cryptocurrency hedge fund MetaStable Capital and Spearhead, which backs founders to make angel investments. His views on startups and life were compiled into the book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.Open the full entry, Garry Tan, Justin KanJustin KanJustin Kan is an American internet entrepreneur and investor who rose to prominence in 2007 with Justin.tv, which broadcast his life around the clock from a head-mounted camera. He went on to co-found the game streaming platform Twitch, which Amazon acquired for about $970 million in 2014; he also founded the legal technology company Atrium and co-founded the gaming payments platform Stash.Open the full entry and Amjad Masad. Replika then had 35 million users.⁠[6]

In February 2026 Kuyda said she did not favour regulating AI companion apps, arguing “this should come from inside the industry,” and said the Italian matter “has been resolved.”⁠[1]

On October 19, 2026, Wabi relaunched as a multiplayer personal AI assistant working as a messenger app with multiple agentic threads for different tasks; Kuyda called it an evolution of the earlier pivot, and the product is free for now.⁠[11]

Replika: Official website: https://replika.ai (opens in a new window)⁠[7]

Wabi: Official website: https://wabi.ai/ (opens in a new window)⁠[11]

X: Public account: https://x.com/ekuyda (opens in a new window)⁠[7]