Maor Shlomo's Base44 payday climbs to $150 million after latest Wix payout
Wix's earnings reveal another $41 million milestone payment as the company doubles down on the AI platform driving its growth, even as it weighs on profitability.
Less than two years after founding Base44, Maor Shlomo has now received more than $150 million from Wix as the artificial intelligence startup continues to outperform the ambitious targets set when it was acquired.
Wix disclosed in its second-quarter earnings that it paid Shlomo an additional $41 million after Base44 exceeded another set of performance milestones, extending one of the fastest and most lucrative startup success stories in Israeli technology in recent years. The latest payment lifts the total consideration Shlomo has received since selling the company well above the original acquisition price agreed when Wix bought Base44 in the summer of 2025.
The milestone payments also illustrate how quickly Base44 has evolved from an ambitious acquisition into one of Wix's central growth engines, and how expensive that transformation has become.
The company returned to a net loss of $76.4 million in the second quarter, compared with a profit of $57.7 million a year earlier. While the deterioration reflected several factors, Wix said the additional payment to Shlomo, together with the rapidly growing costs of operating Base44, contributed to the weaker bottom line.
Base44 allows users to build applications through natural-language conversations with AI, a category commonly known as "vibe coding." Founded by Shlomo shortly after completing an extended period of reserve duty following the October 7 attacks, the company grew at an exceptional pace before being acquired by Wix only months after its launch.
Since joining Wix, the business has continued to expand rapidly. The company previously reported that Base44 reached an annual recurring revenue run rate of $150 million by May, significantly ahead of internal expectations. That performance triggered successive milestone payments under the acquisition agreement, with the latest $41 million payment pushing Shlomo's total proceeds above $150 million.
Rather than slowing investment as the business matures, Wix is accelerating it.
The company recently introduced Base1, Base44's first dedicated large language model, replacing the general-purpose AI models on which the platform had previously relied. According to Wix, developing its own model should substantially reduce computing and inference costs, the largest expense associated with AI products.
Wix said it expects Base44's gross margin to improve to roughly 60% during the second half of 2026, compared with levels close to break-even earlier in the year. However, management has no immediate plans to translate those efficiency gains into higher profitability. Instead, it intends to reinvest much of the savings into marketing in an effort to accelerate Base44's growth and expand its market share.
That strategy highlights the trade-off facing Wix. Base44 has become one of the company's fastest-growing businesses and its clearest response to investor concerns about the impact of AI on traditional website-building software. At the same time, the platform requires substantial spending on both computing infrastructure and customer acquisition.
Marketing expenses rose 67% year over year in the second quarter to $173 million, reflecting the company's continued push to expand Base44's presence amid intensifying competition in AI-powered software development.
Shlomo has also emerged as one of the most prominent young entrepreneurs in Israeli technology. Last week, he announced that he was using part of the proceeds from the Base44 sale to establish a fund dedicated to cancer research after losing his mother to the disease. He said he had already invested in seven companies developing new cancer therapies and planned to expand those investments over time.
