Amjad Masad built a $3 billion company that lets anyone publish iOS apps by typing a sentence. Revenue grew 15x. But security researchers found vibe-coded apps ship with critical vulnerabilities. The friction he removed wasn't just bureaucracy.
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Wikipedia turns 25 and announces enterprise deals with Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon. The checks are finally arriving, but the nonprofit still won't say how much.
Amjad Masad built a $3 billion company that lets anyone publish iOS apps by typing a sentence. Revenue grew 15x. But security researchers found vibe-coded apps ship with critical vulnerabilities. The friction he removed wasn't just bureaucracy.
Amjad Masad wore a keffiyeh to a shooting range in Santa Clara last November. Two minutes with an AR-22, and the paper burglar's head was perforated. "I always compete," he told the SF Standard reporter riding shotgun in his black Mercedes.
Eight weeks later, Masad's company shipped a feature that turns competition into something closer to target practice. Replit's Mobile Apps feature, launched Thursday, lets anyone type a sentence and receive a publishable iOS application. No Xcode. No provisioning profiles. No developer account paperwork. Just intent, then app, then App Store submission. The friction that kept amateur software out of Apple's walled garden evaporated in a single product update.
"The barrier to creating a fully published, monetizable iOS application is no longer syntax or SDKs," Masad told CNBC. "It's just intent. You describe the vibe, and the AI handles the architecture."
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Attackers already use AI. Novee just handed defenders the same weapon. Three Unit 8200 veterans built an AI pen tester, raised $51.5M in eight months, and signed customers faster than most startups hire engineers. The race is on.
OneBrief's $2.15B valuation on $19M revenue bets military planning software can become a platform before Palantir notices. The Battle Road acquisition complicates the math: the simulation engine was already running on Palantir infrastructure.
When Google locked AlphaFold 3 behind commercial restrictions, three MIT PhD students rebuilt it in four months. Now Boltz has $28M, a Pfizer partnership, and a bet that open-source can capture drug discovery infrastructure.
Hollywood calls it bootlegging. Investors say $6.5 billion. MiniMax built the top Chinese AI app in America—then Disney sued. With 70% of revenue overseas, the startup tests whether Chinese AI can scale while depending on Western courts.
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