Israeli developer Maor Shlomo made headlines last year for selling a solo-owned, six-month-old bootstrapped project to SaaS website builder Wix for $80 million, but this was just the start. His very creation, Base44, could now empower others to do the same.
Alongside Lovable, Replit and others, Base44 is part of the rise of AI-enabled vibe coding platforms that let anyone create websites and apps using natural language. Initially a boon for non-technical users, this trend is now moving the goalposts for developers, too. If all you need is an idea, the real bottleneck becomes decisions, not code.
For app developers, this means having to put more thought into strategic choices, but vibe coding also frees up time that was previously spent on less important tasks. “Even technical folks can [now] build without the headache of where to deploy this to, and how to connect to the backend or database,” Shlomo told The Infinite Loop.
Early on, Base44 made a bet on vertical integration. Rather than simply focusing on app creation, it operates like a “mini-cloud” that lets users easily add a user management system, a security layer, SEO, analytics, and more. “We try to enable as many capabilities as possible without the need for an API key,” Shlomo said.
In practice, this means that you won’t need to register for additional services for your Base44 app to send emails or connect to your Gmail or WhatsApp. According to Shlomo, this matches user expectations: “Even if you're super technical, what you want to spend your time on is actually building, not signing up for different services and stitching them together.”
With rivals like Claude Code becoming part of many developers’ routines, but more narrowly focusing on code, Base44 has benefited from this differentiation, also boosted by synergies with Wix. Less than a year after its acquisition, Base44 reportedly reached $150 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by May 2026. The team now numbers more than 100, operating inside the publicly traded company.
“Wix’s ecosystem and the company [itself] played really well with Base44,” Shlomo said, calling it a “perfect match.” But growth aside, he said that the most rewarding aspect for him has been seeing what it helped people build. Spoiler alert: it is more varied than you may think.
Of all the apps built with Base44, many do fall into the category of prototypes, school projectsand hobbyist pastimes. But there are also businesses in the making, such as AI book generator GiftMyBook and flight compensation platform Gyro, which both hit $1 million in ARR in three months.
While these are just two examples, and arguably outliers, they have a front-row seat to see what vibe coding is changing. “In today’s world almost anything can be copied,” Gyro founder Jonathan Attias stated on Reddit. “The moat isn’t the idea. It’s the execution over time.”
Execution happens behind the scenes, but the front window is equally important. The likes of Wix and competitors like Framer had already democratized good website design, with a wide range of templates for users to choose from. Base44 follows that approach as well, but vibe coding also makes it easy to optimize each user interface element, even without design chops.
Base44 provides many app templates organized by category; here, productivity. [Screenshot]
“My favorite piece is when I'm looking at something that I'm building and there’s a component that I don't like,” Shlomo said. “I right-click on that and ask ‘Hey, show me five potential different designs for this component.’ And then when I have it in front of my eyes, [I can say] ‘Okay, I like this one.’”
That’s another positive side effect of vibe coding: app creators can now iterate much faster. Even the best apps weren’t built in one day, but it takes less time to get there. “You can easily iterate and try out many different ideas, because the time that you have to spend in order to build a new capability or test it out really goes down,” Shlomo said.
The other side of the coin is that having a well-designed app is no longer differentiating — or not for long, as it can be replicated. “What’s hard to copy is how it’s built and operated. The execution. The edge cases. The trust layer. The real-world processes behind the UI,” Attias told Base44’s community on Reddit.
When it comes to trust, the question of who is building is particularly important, and could be one of the first things developers need to think about.
According to Shlomo, every person who wants to become a builder or entrepreneur should ask themselves what advantages they have: “Is there a domain that they know more than anyone else? Do they maybe have access to a specific group or audience? For example, if I have worked with doctors, maybe now we can build the platform tools for doctors, and have this leverage versus the average person who might try to do that.”
Such connections can help build trust, but also support go-to-market strategies in an increasingly competitive environment. If we become inundated with apps because anyone can create anything, discovery becomes key.
That’s also where it helps to have built your own audience — just like Shlomo, who has more than 60,000 LinkedIn followers. Sharing his journey candidly and engaging with the community proved to be an asset for Base44, but that’s also an inspiration for others who might hope to follow his footsteps. “This is the most fun I've had in my career,” he said.
