Amjad Masad
Co-founder and CEO, Replit
Codecademy and Facebook
Amjad Masad has written that he graduated from university in Amman and, while studying, worked in cybersecurity on the side[1][2]. After a short period at Yahoo, he was the first employee at Codecademy, where he did technical leadership and built product and infrastructure[1]. He has described himself as a founding engineer at Codecademy[2].
Masad then worked at Facebook as a tech lead on the JavaScript infrastructure team, which he helped start[1]. That team built and maintained open-source tools for JavaScript development, including the Babel compiler, the Jest testing framework and the React Native packager[1]. In a 2021 essay he wrote that he had been a founding engineer on React Native, and that Babel and Jest became standard tools[2].
Founding Replit
Masad is co-founder and CEO of Replit[3]. The company's leadership page lists Haya Odeh as its other co-founder[3]. TechCrunch wrote in August 2026 that Masad founded the company a decade earlier[4].
On his website Masad describes Replit's aim as bringing the next billion software creators online[1]. He compares the gap between professional programmers and everyone else to literacy before the printing press[1]. In a 2020 essay, Replit is not an IDE, he explained that the name comes from the REPL, or read-eval-print loop, and that Replit sits closer to the REPL end of the range from REPL to IDE[5]. He wrote that the goal was to collapse the development lifecycle into a simple interface where code goes live in one click, and to make coding fun again[5].
In February 2021, after Replit's Series A, he wrote that it was time to be more ambitious and that he wanted to create trillions of dollars in value through better access to technology and tools[2].
Replit Agent
In September 2024 Replit launched Replit Agent, an AI system that can create and deploy applications from a few sentences of description[6]. Replit described the agent as working like a pair programmer that configures the development environment, installs dependencies and runs code[6]. It was available from a laptop or the Replit mobile app[6].
Replit now describes its mission as making the process of turning an idea into working software as intuitive as drawing a picture or writing a story[3]. Its about page says it wants software creation to be as accessible as using a smartphone, with ideas turned into software through conversation rather than code[3].
Growth in 2025 and 2026
TechCrunch reported in August 2026 that Replit had received a $9 billion valuation earlier that year, six months after it was valued at $3 billion[4]. It also reported that the company's run-rate was tracking toward a billion dollars a year, compared with $2.8 million in reported revenue in 2024[4]. TechCrunch wrote that the past 18 months had brought the biggest changes in the company's history[4].
Masad was booked to speak on the Disrupt Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco on 13 to 15 October, on the future of programming and a world in which ideas can easily be turned into products[4]. His website lists essays on topics including why programmers should learn compilers, investing in synthesis and civilizational primitives[7].
Known for
- Co-founding Replit
- Replit Agent
- Early work on Babel, Jest and React Native at Facebook
- First employee at Codecademy
Sources
- Amjad Masad: About — checked 6 Nov 2026
- Amjad Masad: Ambition++; Reflecting on a decade of work, February 2021 — checked 6 Nov 2026
- Replit: About Us — checked 6 Nov 2026
- TechCrunch: Amjad Masad, CEO and co-founder of Replit, joins the Disrupt Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, August 2026 — checked 6 Nov 2026
- Amjad Masad: Replit is not an IDE, September 2020 — checked 6 Nov 2026
- Replit blog: Introducing Replit Agent, September 2024 — checked 6 Nov 2026
- Amjad Masad: personal website and essays — checked 6 Nov 2026