Replit CEO Amjad Masad on staying independent, Apple fight, and $1B run rate

At TechCrunch's StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, Replit CEO Amjad Masad discussed the company's trajectory and strategic decisions. Replit, an AI coding assistant, grew from $2.8 million in revenue in 2024 to a projected billion-dollar annual run rate. Masad addressed the possibility of a sale, contrasting with rival Cursor's reported $60 billion SpaceX acquisition talks. He emphasized Replit's gross margin positivity for over a year and net revenue retention reaching 300%, arguing the company can remain independent. Masad criticized Apple for blocking Replit's App Store updates, calling Apple's stated reasons a lie and threatening legal action. He noted Replit's target audience of non-technical users and its full-stack platform. Masad ranked Anthropic as best for agentic loops, praised Google's Flash models for price-performance, and acknowledged Chinese models like Kimi. He cited customers including Zillow, Meta, and Bain & Company, with Bain replacing Tableau and Power BI with Replit and Databricks. Masad mentioned considering investing in customers, citing Magic School as a success story. Replit integrated with Stripe, with transactions growing triple digits month over month.