Replit CEO Amjad Masad Rules Out Sale Despite Rival Acquisition Rumours

Replit CEO Amjad Masad has firmly stated that the company intends to remain independent, even as industry speculation suggests a rival AI coding firm, Cursor, is in advanced talks to be acquired by SpaceX for approximately $60 billion. Speaking at TechCrunch's StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, Masad positioned Replit's financial health as a key differentiator, highlighting that the company has maintained positive gross margins for over a year. He contrasted this stability with reports indicating that Cursor is operating at negative 23% gross margins, a situation Masad argued makes staying independent increasingly difficult for the competitor.

Masad emphasised that Replit has tracked toward a billion-dollar annual run rate, driven by a business model targeting non-technical users who previously could not create software. The platform provides an end-to-end solution from prompt to deployed application, managing security and database migrations internally. This approach has resulted in a net revenue retention rate reaching as high as 300%, a figure Masad described as incredibly high and indicative of significant expansion among existing customers.

While affirming his personal preference to avoid litigation, Masad confirmed that Replit is willing to take Apple to court regarding allegations that the App Store giant has blocked updates based on what he termed outright lies. The dispute centres on claims that Replit's iOS app downloads new code to the device after the approval process, a practice Masad insists is false and discriminatory. He noted that while the company could lose the app without catastrophic business impact, the platform remains vital for users ranging from executives to children in underprivileged communities learning to code.

Beyond its core platform, Replit is exploring a strategy to invest in its own customer startups in exchange for equity, citing the success of Magic School, which generated $20 million in its first year. The company has also integrated with Stripe, with transaction volumes growing at triple digits month-on-month. Masad noted that customers are generating significantly more revenue than Replit itself, with some enterprises reporting returns one to three orders of magnitude higher than their monthly spend.

On the competitive landscape, Masad ranked Anthropic as currently undefeated on the core agentic loop, though he acknowledged that Google's Flash models offer superior price-performance and that GPT-5 is catching up quickly. He explained that Replit's security model creates an entirely new isolated project on Google Cloud for every deployment, inheriting Google's security framework to protect non-technical users from external database vulnerabilities. This security focus, combined with product-led growth, has allowed Replit to win enterprise deals with companies like Zillow and Meta.