Wix acquires vibe-coding startup Base44 for $80 million
Israeli developer Maor Shlomo sold his six-month-old, bootstrapped startup Base44 to Wix in a cash deal announced Wednesday. Base44 is a vibe-coding platform that lets users build full apps with AI-based text prompts—no coding needed.
Shlomo wasn’t exactly solo. The startup had eight employees who will share a $25 million retention bonus from the deal. Wix did not disclose retention terms. 
Base44 hit 250,000 users within half a year, gaining 10,000 in the first three weeks alone. The company was profitable, posting $189,000 in profit in May despite large LLM costs, Shlomo confirmed publicly.
The startup grew mostly by word of mouth, with Shlomo sharing progress openly on LinkedIn and Twitter. Base44’s pitch: empower anyone, technical or not, to build software without code.
Base44 competes with other vibe-coders like Adaptive Computer, offering database, storage, analytics, and authentication features, plus integrations like email and maps.
Shlomo, 31, is known in Israel’s tech scene from his previous startup Explorium and has connections in AI security startups. Base44 scored partnerships with Israeli giants eToro and Similarweb.
They switched to using Anthropic’s Claude LLM on AWS instead of OpenAI models for better cost-performance, scoring an AWS Tel Aviv demo invite last month.
Shlomo shared this on LinkedIn when announcing the deal:
“Crazy f***ing journey so far”
“The scale and volume we need is not something we can organically grow into …
If we were able to get so far organically, bootstrapped, I’m excited to see our new pace now that we have all the resources in place.”
Wix, known for no-code website building, scooped Base44 as a fast-growing AI-driven vibe-coding player for a modest sum. For context, OpenAI paid $3 billion for a similar startup founded in 2021.
Shlomo could not be reached for further comment.
