Replit CEO Amjad Masad on Independence, Apple Feud, and Billion-Dollar Revenue Trajectory

Replit CEO Amjad Masad says his company is on track to reach a billion-dollar annual revenue run rate, just 18 months after reporting $2.8millionintotal2024revenue\mathrm{.}SpeakingatTechCrunc{h}^{\mathrm{\prime }}sStrictlyVCeventinSanFrancisco,Masadaddressedtheindustr{y}^{\mathrm{\prime }}smostpressingquestions:whetherReplitwillsellinamarketwhererivalCursorisreportedlybeingacquiredbySpaceXfor$60 billion, how the company is battling Apple over APP Store restrictions, and why Replit may soon invest directly in its own customers.

Staying Independent Despite acquisition Frenzy

Masad was direct about Replit's intention to remAIn independent, while acknowledging fiduciary duties mean conversations with potential acquirers do happen. He drew a sharp contrast with Cursor, which reports suggest is operating at negative 23% gross margins. "It's incredibly hard to stay independent if you're burning a ton of cash and wanting to invest in training models," he said. Replit, by Comparison, has maintained positive gross margins for over a year by targeting a different customer base — primarily non-technical users who previously could not create software at all. The company offers an end-to-end platform that handles everything from the initial Prompt to a deployed, scalable application, including security, databases, and database migration.

The AI model landscape

When asked to rank its Foundation Model partners, Masad offered a nuanced assessment. anthropic remains "undefeated" on the core Agentic loop with superior tool calling and longer coherence. GPT-5 is catching up quickly. Google's Flash family excels at price-performance, currently beating open-source alternatives. Replit uses all three, and Masad noted emerging players like Reflection AI and China's Kimi — which he said is roughly three months behind Anthropic's January-generation models — are also impressive.

Enterprise Wins on Security, Not Just Features

Replit's enterprise customer acquisition is predominantly product-led and organic, with companies like Zillow and Meta adopting the tool before requesting enterprise plans. In formal bake-offs, Masad says the deciding fACTor is often security rather than features. Unlike tools that generate websites connected to external databases — creating exposure risks and demanding complex row-level security configuration — Replit's full-stack approach integrates the database into the project itself, keeping it off the public internet. A decade of battling crypto scammers and hackers has also given Replit cybersecurity capabilities comparable to a dedicated security startup. Every deployed app runs in a newly created, isolated project on Google Cloud, inheriting google's security model.

Retention, Churn, and AI Bloat

Despite fears that prototypes built on Replit would get rebuilt into company stacks, churn is "very, very low" and net revenue retention reaches as high as 300% in some cases. Masad says enterprises often find that attempted rebuilds produce worse results and end up keeping applications on Replit, especially when single-tenant environments are provisioned. Bain & Company, for example, replaced Tableau and Power BI with Replit and Databricks. On concerns about AI bloat generating excessive Token Consumption, Masad says enterprise customers are highly ROI-conscious and report returns that often reach two to three orders of magnitude relative to their Replit spending.

The Apple App Store Conflict

Replit's app has been on the App Store for four years, used by children learning to code on Android devices in underprivileged communities and by executives in meetings. But Apple has blocked Replit's updates for months while approving rival Lovable's app-building app just this week. Masad believes the trigger was Replit's December launch of iOS app creation capabilities. "We think Apple feels threatened by that," he said. Apple's stated reason — that Replit downloads new code to devices after the approval process in violation of guidelines — Masad calls "a lie" and says the company can prove it in court if necessary. He still hopes to avoid litigation: "I'm a fan of Apple, and I'd love to collaborate and build something great together. But you can't run a marketplace that a billion people have access to and make decisions that are discriminatory or based on whims." He added that losing the app would not materially affect Replit's business.

Investing in Customers

Masad revealed that Replit is seriously considering investing directly in customers in exchange for equity. He has personally invested in several startups that began on Replit before generating revenue, including MAGIc School — a teacher-built AI app for educators that earned $20 million in its first year. Other Replit-native startups have reached Valuations of half a billion dollars. With Stripe integration now live, transaction volume flowing through Replit's platform is growing at triple-digit rates month over month. "Pretty soon," Masad said, "our customers will be making more revenue than we are."