When 31-year-old Maor Shlomo quietly launched Base44 from Tel Aviv in early 2024, few would have predicted the software engineer would strike an $80 million deal with web giant Wix just six months later. Yet that is precisely what has happened—marking one of the fastest and most striking startup exits in recent memory, and offering a glimpse into the future of a new entrepreneurial class: the AI-powered solo founder.
Base44, a so-called “vibe-coding” platform, enables users to build full-stack applications through conversational prompts. By integrating large language models (LLMs) with no-code infrastructure, Shlomo’s tool allowed non-technical users to generate databases, deploy apps, and configure systems usually reserved for experienced developers.
But it wasn’t just the tech that caught attention—it was the pace.
A six-month sprint to $80 million
What began as a side project snowballed into a full product with more than 250,000 users by June. Despite the absence of a formal launch campaign, Base44 reached profitability within months—generating around $189,000 in revenue—largely thanks to viral exposure on LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter), where Shlomo regularly shared behind-the-scenes updates, code snippets, and transparent financials.
Wix’s acquisition—paid entirely in cash—is seen as a strategic play to incorporate advanced AI-driven development tools into its ecosystem. Its CEO, Avishai Abrahami, hailed Base44’s “transformational” potential to simplify full-stack development and push the boundaries of what no-code tools can achieve.
In return, Shlomo and his small team of eight—many of whom were recruited from his online audience—will receive $25 million in retention bonuses, and stay on to help scale the product within Wix.
The rise of the solo AI founder
Base44’s meteoric rise underscores a wider trend in the tech world: the increasing power of AI tools to compress timelines, lower barriers to entry, and empower individuals to build sophisticated products without large teams or venture capital.
In decades past, launching a software company meant months of hiring, funding rounds, and complex infrastructure. Today, thanks to LLMs and pre-trained models, a single developer can generate, test, and deploy production-grade software at a pace once considered impossible.
“We’re entering an era where a single person, with the right AI tools, can replicate the output of an entire early-stage startup,” says Dr. Yael Ben-David, a researcher in AI-driven entrepreneurship at Tel Aviv University. “This fundamentally changes who gets to build, who gets to profit—and how quickly innovation moves.”
It’s not just developers. Designers, writers, marketers, and product managers are beginning to build AI-assisted businesses from scratch—some within days. Micro-entrepreneurship is no longer a fringe idea, but a credible pathway to meaningful exits.
A different kind of startup story
Yet Base44 is not quite a tale of one man in a bedroom coding through the night. Despite Shlomo being the only official founder, he assembled a tight-knit group of contributors—many sourced from his social media presence—who helped handle everything from design to customer support. Still, the absence of formal investors, incubators, or even a marketing budget makes the sale all the more remarkable.
“There’s a growing appetite for authenticity and transparency in how startups are built,” says Liron Slonimsky, a startup advisor in Tel Aviv. “What Maor did was build in public, invite people along, and prove you don’t need VC money to get noticed.”
Wix’s acquisition may mark the end of Base44 as an independent startup, but for many watching, it’s only the beginning of something bigger.
What comes next?
If Base44 is a harbinger, expect to see a proliferation of solo and small-team ventures built on AI scaffolding—leaner, faster, and more nimble than their predecessors. Platforms like Replit, Vercel, and Notion are already leaning into this model, and investors are beginning to track publicly-built products as a new form of early validation.
Of course, questions remain. Can such projects scale sustainably? Do they risk becoming feature-rich but shallow? And what happens when competitors build even faster using better-trained models?
But for now, the message is clear: with AI, the garage startup is back—and this time, it’s global, code-native, and moving at lightning speed.
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