Zapia lands in Europe

The AI that's already won over more than 7 million people is now crossing the Atlantic.

Co-founder & COO

When we founded Zapia in late 2023, we started from a simple, almost stubborn conviction: most people don't want to learn how to use artificial intelligence or understand its technical guts. They want to get through their day and get back to what actually matters. We started with that idea front and center, and since then more than 7 million people have joined Zapia over a little more than two years. Today I'm writing to tell you about a new chapter I'm really excited about: we're coming to Europe.

From answering to acting

Let me explain why that matters. The first wave of AI gave us answers: you ask a question, the tool replies. That's nice, but the real work still lands on your plate. From day one, we wanted to build something different, something that could take the next step, going from answering to acting.

Instead of handing you a list of restaurants, it books the table. Instead of explaining how to rearrange your week, it moves the meeting and lets the right people know. That difference, going from information to action, is the obsession that drives us every morning, and it's what makes this story so personal for me.

A hundred small tasks, one command

When that idea works, what you feel isn't technological awe, it's relief. I think about all those little points of friction that pile up on any given day: the WhatsApp messages that get lost in groups you can't keep up with, the emails stacking up, the simple plan that never comes together because you have to text five people to coordinate it. It's not one huge task that wears us down, it's a hundred tiny ones. That's exactly what you hand off to Zapia, sometimes with something as simple as saying "Zapia, move the meeting," "Zapia, schedule that follow-up over WhatsApp for Monday," "Zapia, bring me a summary of the family group every morning," or "Zapia, reply to my client's email."

AI connected to WhatsApp

If there's one piece I'm especially proud of, it's the way Zapia connects to WhatsApp. It's something a lot of people were missing without realizing they wanted it. Through that connection, Zapia can do a bunch of things for you. It summarizes the groups you can't keep up with, gives you a daily digest of the most important messages, sends messages and reaches out to multiple contacts or vendors at once, and schedules messages to go out at just the right moment.

The logic is simple: you ask, and Zapia gets it done inside WhatsApp, or pulls that information into the app. Instead of spending your day trapped in your chats, you let Zapia follow them for you and hand you only what you need. So what does any of this have to do with Europe? Everything. All the things we'd been building, the way we built them and with the integrations we designed for Latin America, started catching on in other parts of the world too.

Why Europe, and why now

Like I said, even though we never set our sights there, we started seeing users show up organically, especially in Portugal and Spain because of the language, but also across a number of other countries in the region. We stopped to ask ourselves why, and the answer practically wrote itself.

There's a real cultural closeness with Latin America, and you can see it in people's habits. The clearest of all is messaging culture, that living-inside-WhatsApp for almost everything, from the family group chat to dealing with a vendor. If the way Zapia works already made sense on this side of the Atlantic, it made just as much sense on the other. We weren't going to teach anyone a new behavior; we were going to slot into a routine that already existed. So we decided to go meet people where they are, instead of waiting for them to find us.

Backed by Prosus

I can't tell this story without mentioning the people in our corner. To date we've raised close to $19 million in seed funding, led by Prosus, one of the largest tech companies in the world, behind platforms like iFood, Despegar, and OLX. That backing gives us the fuel to speed up our move into Europe and build faster.

AI for real life, anywhere

There's something I believe deeply, and it's what motivates me most about this project. AI only delivers on its promise when it reaches everyday people and actually helps them in their daily lives. We're not building Zapia for specialists or a handful of tech enthusiasts, we're building it for anyone who wants to get through their day with less effort and, in doing so, save time and money. Whether you're in São Paulo, Bogotá, Barcelona, or Amsterdam, daily life looks more alike than we think: the same packed calendar, the same WhatsApp groups, the same wish to claw back a little time. Democratizing that access, putting it within everyone's reach and not just for people who already feel comfortable with technology, is exactly why we exist.

And so that idea doesn't stay just talk, we back it up with facts: everything I just told you about lives in a pretty complete free plan. The WhatsApp connection, the summaries, sending messages, managing your calendar, it's all there, no payment required to get started. For us, taking the friction out of your day should never have been a privilege for the few.

Europe is a new chapter in a story that's barely begun, and I'm certain we'll gradually reach more and more places. So, if you're not using Zapia yet, give it a try: create your free account at app.zapia.com. I'd love to hear how it goes.