There is a lot of debate in the starting world about how AI makes people so productive that it can cause a generation “Saloid unicorn” -Companions of a person worth more than $ 1 billion.
While a real solo unicorn remains a mythical creature, Israeli programmer Maor Shlomo provided imperative evidence on Wednesday that the concept may not be impossible.
Shlomo sold the 6-month-old, bootstrapped vibe-coding Base44 in Wix for $ 80 million, Wix announced Wednesday. And the deal was cash, Wix confirmed to TechCrunch.
Of course, this was not a billion dollars or close to it. And Shlomo wasn’t really solo – he had eight employees, Wix confirmed. They will collectively receive $ 25 million out of $ 80 million as a “conservation” bonus. Wix refused to give details of this part of the deal, as well as how long they need to stay at work to get full payments.
Still, the rapid growth and impressive Base44 sale price was the discussion of the Vibe encoding community.
In its six months as an autonomous company, Base44 reported to 250,000 users, hitting 10,000 users in the first three weeks. According to Shlomo’s positions In X and LinkedIn, the company was profitable, creating $ 189,000 in May, even after covering the high cost of LLM contract, which was also publicly documented.
Base44 spread mainly from mouth to mouth, as Shlomo, a 31 -year -old developer, shared his trip to LinkedIn and Twitter. The project started as a side business, he said Israeli CTEch Technology News Website.
“Base44 is a Moonshot experiment – helping everyone, technically or not. They build software without coding at all,” he Explained in LinkedIn When he started it to the public.
It is one of the latest Vibe coding products designed for non -developers. Users import text suggestions and the platform creates complete applications based on database, storage, authentication, detailed information and integration. It also supports emails, text messages and maps, with a course map for more business security support.
Base44 is not unique in this area. Other Vibe coders such as adaptive computer handling handle similar infrastructure work. But the quick rise of Base44 was amazing.
Shlomo was already known to the Israeli starting community through his previous start, Insight Partners-Backed Data Analytics Company Explorium. His brother is also a co -founder of AI security startup, token Security, who just raised $ 20 million led by the notable Capital (formerly GGV Capital) and a bundle of Israeli technology angels.
He quickly received a partnership agreements for Base44 with large Israeli technology companies such as Etoro and the similarweb.
After posting about his decision to use Anthropic’s Claude LLM via AWS instead of models from Openai-mainly for costs per performance-Amazon invited Base44 to demo at a Tel Aviv AWS event last month, which Shlomo is documented.
“Crazy journey so far,” Shlomo Posted on LinkedIn When they announce the news of the acquisition. Despite growth and profits-or really because of this-he caught his company that is still launching because “the scale and volume we need is not something we can grow organically … If we could get organically so far, bootstrapped, I am excited to see our new rhythm now.”
For his part, Wix got a proven, rapidly growing, local coding platform for a related song because of his youth. Openai paid $ 3 billion for Windsurf, founded in 2021.
WIX, of course, offers web -based websites that looks professionally designed. Adding a llm profitable product for its offers is a logical move.
Shlomo could not be approached immediately for additional comment.
