As AI continues to find its groove, one of its most popular enterprise use cases is writing assistants. And one of the most complex and valuable forms of writing is coding. This concept has bred a subset of the AI industry that focuses on tools to streamline developer workflows with automated coding.
Wix is the latest company to jump on this trend with the acquisition of Base44. The new addition to the Wix family offers a conversational UI that helps developers – and non-developers for that matter – build web experiences in a no-code way. That includes websites (Wix’ bread & butter) as well as apps.
That makes Base44 the latest in a string of AI-centric moves for Wix. There’s a bit of an arms race going on in the website builder space to integrate AI tools that automate a given platform’s creation workflows. That in turn makes them more attractive, especially for time-starved SMBs, and thus competitive.
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Tip of the Spear
That last part is critical because the website builder space has become fiercely competitive. For the past decade, everyone from GoDaddy to Squarespace has been adding features to gain a competitive edge and engender upsells and adjacent revenue opportunities. That happens as hosting margins fall.
Before the semi-recent AI surge, those platform additions included things like SEO tools, eCommerce capabilities, and other things that make websites richer and more functional. Websites are the tip of the spear for SMBs – it’s often the first step before graduating to some of these other advanced functions.
But now, the arms race among website builders and hosts has shifted to AI. The majority of product updates and press releases we’re seeing underscore AI. And in many cases, the specific integration works towards automating various parts of the website creation process, such as writing assistants.
AI-coding is a natural extension of this trend, given that it has the potential to democratize advance web development work. In this case, it’s a conversational interface to launch a web development process. Base44’s claim to fame is letting users say what they want to build, then it’s brought into existence.
Automation & Agency
Like many other AI integrations we’ve examined recently, the name of the game is to balance automation and agency. In other words, automation is valuable in its time savings, but many SMBs still want to have control over the final work. So offering optionality for levels of automation, or manual overide, is key.
This appears to be the case in Base44, but we’ll watch closely to see how well it resonates with Wix customers and prospects. But for now, it appears to be a valuable addition to Wix growing platform. And the deal no doubt is positive for Base44 in that Wix can bring it capital support and scale.
In that sense, Wix tells Localogy that Base44 will continue to operate as a distinct product and business, while it benefits from the support and scale noted above. This says a lot about Base 44’s brand equity in that Wix wants it to continue operating under its existing identity, while folding some parts into Wix.
As for the deal terms, Wix acquired Base44 for an initial consideration of about $80 million plus additional earn-out payments paid through 2029. As always, that’s predicated on various performance metrics. Meanwhile, Wix could begin to see the fruits of this investment return over the coming year.
