Amjad Masad

Amjad Masad is the co-founder and chief executive of Replit, which he established in 2016 to make creating software accessible beyond professional programmers. The Jordanian American engineer helped build foundational JavaScript developer tools before turning browser-based coding, AI-assisted programming, and autonomous software agents into successive expressions of that ambition.

From Jordan to developer infrastructure

Growing up in Amman, Masad sometimes lacked consistent access to a personal computer during college. Programming across different machines required repeatedly rebuilding his development environment, prompting experiments with browser-based coding that eventually produced JSREPL, an open-source, multilingual browser REPL.

Open-source contributions helped him establish a career across geographic and institutional barriers. After working at Yahoo, he became Codecademy’s first employee and a founding engineer, building interactive programming-education tools. At Facebook, he worked on its photos product, helped start and lead its JavaScript infrastructure team, contributed to React Native, and worked on the Babel JavaScript compiler, the Jest testing framework, and React Native packaging.

Masad co-founded Replit with Haya Odeh, who shaped the company’s design. Its browser-based environment combined code editing, execution, collaboration, and eventually deployment, allowing users to start building without assembling a conventional local development stack.

Making software creation conversational

In July 2020, Masad demonstrated an early GPT-powered programming assistant capable of explaining code and suggesting improvements. His writing on AI-assisted programming anticipated tools that could correct beginner mistakes and reduce dependence on manually written syntax.

Replit introduced Ghostwriter in 2022, embedding code completion, generation, transformation, and explanation inside its development environment. At the 2023 AI Engineer Summit, Masad argued that AI as a default programming interface should reach ordinary users, including people coding on phones, and introduced Model Farm for incorporating model inference into applications. Michele Catasta separately explained Replit’s model-training and evaluation techniques.

By March 2026, Replit Agent 4 incorporated collaborative visual design and parallel agents. That month, Masad announced $400 million in financing at a $9 billion valuation.

His defining positions include:

• Browser-based software creation: Installation requirements, specialized hardware, and deployment complexity restrict who can build software; making the entire workflow accessible through a browser expands participation.
• Open source as an economic equalizer: Public code allows programmers outside established technology networks to demonstrate ability and contribute to shared infrastructure.
• The self-driving company: In an essay co-written with Scott Kennedy, Masad extends software agents into incident investigation, code review, customer support, and sales research, with human oversight, access controls, auditing, and escalation for consequential decisions.