Israeli developer Maor Shlomo has sold his six-month-old AI startup, Base44, to Wix in a deal that is causing heads to turn in the tech world, to the tune of 80 million dollars in cash. Base44 is a vibe-coding platform that allows anyone, no matter their technical ability, to create full applications by typing text prompts. It does all the database configuration, authentication, analytics, messaging, and integrations. It has grown to 250,000 users since its launch, with 10,000 users in the first three weeks alone. The startup reported a profit of $189,000 in May despite the high costs of LLM (large language model) token usage.
Word-of-mouth and Shlomo openly sharing his experience on LinkedIn and X made the company popular. Even his choice of using the Claude model of Anthropic through AWS rather than OpenAI to achieve greater cost-effectiveness won him a feature at an AWS event in Tel Aviv.
Wix assured that 25 million of the total 80 million will be used in retention bonuses for the Base44 team. The acquisition provides Wix with a powerful AI-driven app development tool to add to its current no-code website builder.
Shlomo, the former co-founder of Explorium, a data analytics company funded by Insight Partners, explained that Base44 had achieved great heights bootstrapped, but to grow further, it would need additional resources. He wrote, “We made it this far organically, so I am eager to see what we can accomplish with the help of Wix.”
Base44 is not the only player in the vibe-coding market, with competitors such as Adaptive Computer also gaining momentum, but its speed, profitability, and clean implementation were what made it shine. The deal adds weight to the argument that AI is empowering a new generation of lean, high-impact startups, making the concept of solo unicorns a reality.
