Web coding makes you rich: a programmer sold a startup for $80 million and created it in just six months

For some, AI means losing their jobs, while for others it is a gold mine. Improving productivity through web coding allows you to earn a lot with little effort.

One of the most popular ideas of our time is artificial intelligence, which makes people so productive that they become «lone unicorns». These are companies consisting of one person and worth, for example, $1 billion. It is still just a concept, but the first evidence is already emerging.

According to TechCrunch, Israeli developer Maor Shlomo came as close as possible on Wednesday. He sold his web-coding startup Base44which was founded only 6 months ago, to Wix for $80 million. Wix is officially announced about the transaction and confirmed payment.

Technically, Shlomo was not alone — he had eight employees. Together, they will receive $25 million of the sum as a bonus for staying on the job. Wix declined to disclose how long employees must fulfill their duties to receive the full payment. But even though it’s a partial fulfillment of the utopian idea, the rapid growth and sale value of Base44 is staggering.

In six months of independent operation, the Base44 project has attracted 250 thousand users, 10 thousand of which — in the first three weeks. According to publications Maor Shlomo at X and LinkedIn, the company made $189 thousand in profit in May, even after paying off the high cost of LLM tokens.

Base44 became known mainly due to «word of mouth» — the 31-year-old programmer shared his development experience on social media. The project started as a side business. Users enter text queries, and the platform creates full-fledged applications with databases, authentication, analytics, etc. The startup also has a plan to develop enterprise-level security support.

The project quickly gained partnership agreements with major Israeli tech companies like eToro and Similarweb. From Wix’s point of view, the company chose a proven, fast-growing local web coding platform for a relatively small amount due to its youth. OpenAI once paid $3 billion for Windsurf, a coding platform founded in 2021.