Laurențiu Bălașa and Marius Iordache

EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™ 2026 finalists, Romania
Laurențiu Bălașa, CEO; Marius Iordache, CTO, The Bible Chat App

Two innovators are turning consumer technology success into spiritual support worldwide.

Laurențiu Bălașa and Marius Iordache have helped to create apps used by hundreds of millions, but their most ambitious work began with a deeper question: What should they build next, and why?

After growing T Me Studios into one of the world’s most downloaded consumer app portfolios — reaching more than 3 billion people globally before its exit in 2020 — the longtime collaborators paused to consider purpose as much as performance.

For Laurențiu, that reflection followed a prolonged period of sadness and personal searching that sharpened his desire to help reduce human suffering. Together, he and Marius decided their next company would be grounded not only in scale and performance, but in meaning. The result was Bible Chat.

The idea emerged from Basmo, a reading app they had previously founded. User behavior revealed that the most engaged readers consistently gravitated toward religious content, revealing a vast, underserved global audience seeking spiritual support in a private and accessible format.

Today, Bible Chat is the world’s leading faith app. Positioned as an AI-powered spiritual companion, it delivers personalized Christian answers rooted in the Bible to help people navigate anxiety, loneliness, grief and doubt during some of the most difficult moments of their lives. The app has reached 40 million users worldwide, with around 1 million people engaging daily to seek comfort, hope and renewed meaning.