Replit's CEO Amjad Masad believes the software app itself is becoming an intermediate step that AI agents will increasingly skip. In a candid interview, Masad went further than most tech leaders in articulating a vision where agents with the ability to transact autonomously will interact with applications on our behalf, fundamentally reshaping how we think about the software we build and use.

What Does Masad Mean by "Agents Will Replace Apps"?

When asked to grade a prediction that within three years up to half the software on personal computers would be apps users created themselves, Masad pivoted to a more radical thesis. Rather than focusing on who builds software, he emphasized what happens after it's built. "In three years, we'll be using fewer apps, we'll be using more agents, and those agents will be using the apps on our behalf," Masad stated. This vision suggests that the traditional application interface, where humans click buttons and navigate menus, represents an outdated interaction model. Instead, AI agents would operate in the background, making decisions and executing tasks without requiring direct human input.

The implication is striking: companies like Replit, which exist to help people build software, are already planning for a world where the software itself becomes less visible. Agents with Visa-powered wallets could transact with other agents while users remain unaware of the underlying transactions occurring on their behalf.

How Is Replit Preparing for an Agent-Driven Future?

Replit is not waiting passively for this shift. The company has been aggressively deploying AI agents internally and externally, with measurable results. Last month, Replit published a claim that its engineers nearly tripled the amount of code each person ships in just six months, while preserving code quality, thanks to the rollout of agents throughout the company. This internal transformation offers a glimpse into how organizations might operate in an agent-centric world.

Masad describes his vision for what he calls the "self-driving company," which involves several key operational changes:

Masad

• Hiring Philosophy: Bringing on engineers who "only look at the code when it's about to get deployed," allowing agents to handle the majority of development work.
• Internal Automation: Deploying an internal bot that serves as "the brain of the company," centralizing decision-making and coordination across teams.
• Management Restructuring: Adopting a management philosophy in which "a CEO is a kind of glorified router" whose routing functions should mostly be automated away.

The company has begun canceling its own software contracts, replacing most of its analytics vendors with tools its employees built themselves. This move demonstrates Replit's commitment to testing its own vision internally before promoting it externally.

What Does This Mean for the Broader Tech Industry?

Masad's vision extends beyond Replit's own operations. He acknowledges that AI is fundamentally changing how people think about learning to code. After spending 15 years making coding easier to learn through Codecademy, where he was a founding engineer, Masad now tells people not to bother learning it at all. "As an entrepreneur, you have to be honest with yourself," he explained. "Otherwise the company would die".

"In three years, we'll be using fewer apps, we'll be using more agents, and those agents will be using the apps on our behalf," said Amjad Masad.

Amjad Masad, Co-founder and CEO of Replit

Replit is also expanding beyond coding tasks. Last month the company launched Replit Design, an agent-based creative tool that incorporates Kimi K3, a model from Chinese AI lab Moonshot AI. Masad noted that this model "is actually now a better designer than Claude," signaling that agent capabilities are spreading across creative and technical domains.

Masad

What About Job Losses and Economic Disruption?

When asked about AI's impact on employment, Masad offered one of the more candid answers from a CEO in the AI era. "Net net, there's going to be more jobs, but also there's going to be more companies," he said. "But companies will get smaller, and they will do layoffs, 100 percent sure". He paired this certainty with sympathy for workers affected by the transition, calling it "cruel" to tell workers in their 50s to retrain. Masad assigned responsibility for addressing this challenge to government, which he said isn't thinking about the problem adequately.

Masad

Replit's trajectory reflects the broader transformation underway in the software industry. The company raised $400 million at a $9 billion valuation in March, triple its valuation from six months earlier. It now claims more than 50 million people build on its platform, including 85 percent of the Fortune 500, and is on track for $1 billion in annual recurring revenue by the end of this year, up from $2.8 million in revenue in all of 2024.

Masad's vision of a future dominated by autonomous agents rather than traditional applications represents a fundamental departure from how the software industry has operated for decades. Whether this prediction materializes as stated, the underlying trend is clear: AI is shifting the focus from what humans build to what AI systems can accomplish independently, with human oversight becoming increasingly optional rather than essential.