Replit’s Amjad Masad on the Cursor deal, fighting Apple, and why he’d rather not sell
Replit CEO Amjad Masad discussed the company's growth, independence, and competitive positioning amid industry speculation about acquisitions, particularly in light of Cursor's reported $60 billion deal with SpaceX. He emphasized Replit's strong financials, including gross margin positivity and net revenue retention as high as 300%, which support its path as an independent company. Masad also highlighted Replit's partnerships with major AI labs and its focus on enabling non-technical users to build and deploy software.
- ▪Replit is on track for a billion-dollar annual run rate after generating $2.8 million in revenue in 2024.
- ▪Masad stated Replit has been gross margin positive for over a year, unlike Cursor, which reportedly operates at negative 23% gross margins.
- ▪Replit provides an end-to-end platform that enables non-technical users to create and deploy scalable applications with built-in security and database management.
- ▪Masad expressed a strong preference for remaining independent but acknowledged ongoing conversations with potential acquirers as part of fiduciary responsibility.
- ▪Replit uses models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and emerging labs like Reflection AI and Chinese model Kimi for its AI capabilities.
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Amjad Masad has been building Replit for a decade, but the last 18 months have been something else entirely. The AI coding assistant company went from $2.8 million in revenue in all of 2024 to tracking toward what Masad describes as a billion-dollar annual run rate. At TechCrunch’s sold-out StrictlyVC event in San Francisco on Thursday night, we covered a lot of ground in a short time, beginning with the question everyone in the industry is asking right now: in a world where rival Cursor is reportedly in talks to be acquired by SpaceX for $60 billion, is Replit also bound to sell? We also got into Replit’s net revenue retention — a measure of how much existing customers expand their spending — which Masad says is reaching as high as 300%, his willingness to take Apple to court over what…
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