Ein AI-Startup wurde nach sechs Monaten für 570 Millionen Yuan übernommen. Der 31-jährige CEO führte ein Team von acht Personen, die sich einen Bargeldbonus im Wert von Hunderten Millionen Yuan teilten. Bevorher war kein einziger Cent an Kapital beschafft worden.

This is what entrepreneurship in the AI era looks like —

Within three weeks of its launch, the number of users exceeded 10,000, and within six months, it exceeded 250,000. Less than half a year after its establishment, without raising a single cent in financing, it was acquired for $80 million (approximately 570 million RMB).

An eight - person small team split $25 million in cash (approximately 178 million RMB).

The 31 - year - old founder said: It's just a side hustle.

The Crazy June of Vibe Coding

The acquired low - code platform is called Base44, founded by Israeli entrepreneur Maor Shlomo in January this year. The six months since its establishment can truly be called a "crazy June".

Within three weeks of its launch, the number of users grew from 0 to 10,000. Two months later, the number of users exceeded 20,000, and it started to turn a profit.

In May, the profit directly reached $189,000, exceeding the previously projected $100,000 (considering that most AI companies are still operating at a loss).

In June, this rapidly rising application was sold to Israeli software giant — Wix. Wix mainly provides cloud - based website development services and went public in the United States in 2013.

Regarding this acquisition, founder Shlomo said on LinkedIn:

The industry is changing at breakneck speed — really, extremely fast. Base44 has been advancing by leaps and bounds on its own momentum. Especially for a self - sufficient company like ours that doesn't rely on external financing, this performance is optimal. Our bet on the "all - in - one" product (backend, identity verification, integration, etc.) has truly yielded remarkable results. However, to reach a larger scale and higher volume, this is not a stage that we can naturally grow into. After several sleepless nights and in - depth discussions with Avishai, I realized that partnering with Wix is the best choice for both Base44 and the community.

For Wix, acquiring a startup whose revenue and user base are both on the rise is a perfectly reasonable move for its website development business.

As early as in its Q1 2025 earnings report, Wix launched an AI - based visual design tool called Wixel. Avishai Abrahami, CEO and co - founder of Wix, said: "Wixel will bring the same transformation to the design field as Wix has brought to website creation, enabling everyone to unleash their creativity."

According to Calcalist, before the acquisition, Wix considered other candidate companies such as Loveable AI and Bolt A, but ultimately chose the smaller Base44 because their business strategy was more appealing.

So, what's the magic of Base44?

What Makes Base44 Different

On the surface, Base44 is no different from other Vibe Coding platforms. It features zero - threshold programming. Users only need to enter simple text prompts to quickly develop applications or mini - games.

However, compared to other platforms that only focus on the front - end and require users to provide their own infrastructure such as servers and databases, each application on Base44 comes with a database, storage layer, identity verification, analysis functions, and various integrations. It truly realizes one - stop, full - stack program construction.

For example, users can create and deploy applications/websites to their own custom domain names in one stop without logging in, without having to jump to external services such as Vercel and Netlify.

At the same time, users can freely use various APIs without worrying about operation and maintenance issues such as rate limits and frequent API key rotations.

In the construction of servers, databases, payment tools, and internal documents, Base44 uses automation and cloud services as much as possible to reduce labor costs.

As Shlomo said:

Keep it lean and rely on technology as much as possible instead of hiring employees.

To put it simply, solve problems with technology rather than hiring people.

As a result, the cost of model calls accounts for the majority of the expenses (in May, the cost of large - model calls accounted for 89% of Base44's total expenditure).

For this reason, Shlomo stopped using OpenAI's API and switched to the more affordable Bedrock (AWS), Vertex AI (Google), and Anthropic.

Of course, this doesn't mean sacrificing the quality of the models infinitely. Shlomo found that although Base44 doesn't charge users for incorrect outputs, when the AI makes continuous mistakes, the additional tokens will increase the cost.

Therefore, deploying the most advanced models → making fewer mistakes → bringing lower costs → higher profits has become Shlomo's creed. At the same time, a smoother user experience will also lead to a lower customer churn rate, thus achieving a positive feedback loop.

Meanwhile, advanced models (such as Claude 4) can also reduce the number of LLM calls (getting it right in one go), and fewer calls mean lower costs.

In addition, Shlomo also pointed out that by increasing the default cache time (for example, from 5 minutes to 1 hour), the cost of tokens can be effectively reduced.

Finally, and perhaps most crucially, Base44 continuously updates in a "small and frequent" manner to ensure that products can be iterated and released in an extremely short period of time.

Shlomo said that he deploys new code to the production environment up to 13 times a day, and each deployment only takes 7 minutes.

From its establishment to its sale, these six months can truly be called 180 days of intense work.

It is this pursuit of ultimate speed that has created a large customer base and a good market position for Base44 in a short period of time.

One More Thing

At only 31 years old, Shlomo is not actually a first - time entrepreneur.

As early as at the age of 24, he founded the data analytics company Explorium, which has more than 100 employees and has received approximately $125 million in investment (mainly from Insight Partners).

At the age of 26, he was included in Forbes' 30 Under 30 list (in 2020).

However, what's even more amazing than his business success is that Shlomo doesn't have a pure computer science background.

He taught himself programming later.

Now, he hopes that more people don't have to learn programming.

Reference Links:

[1]https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/s1iflnlelx

[2]https://www.linkedin.com/in/maor-shlomo-1088b4144/

[3]https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/18/6-month-old-solo-owned-vibe-coder-base44-sells-to-wix-for-80m-cash/

This article is from the WeChat official account “QbitAI”. Author: henry. Republished by 36Kr with permission.