Wix

Frustration with building a website that became a company

The Wix origin story, as told on the company's official website, begins not with a big idea but with a frustrating experience. Avishai Abrahami, Nadav Abrahami and Giora Kaplan tried to build a website for an earlier startup they had founded, and found that the process was expensive, slow and required programming knowledge they did not have. Instead of hiring an outside web developer the next time, the three decided to build a tool that would let anyone, even someone who had never written a line of code, design and manage a website of their own. This approach, the "democratization" of website building, was relatively new in 2006, when most available tools still required significant technical knowledge or reliance on an outside provider. A genuine disagreement between sources should be noted here, one we have not settled one-sidedly. Wix's own official "About Us" page lists only three founders: Abrahami, Abrahami and Kaplan. The corresponding entry in Hebrew Wikipedia, however, adds a fourth founder: Dr. Orit Mossinson. No independent source was found that settles the matter between the two versions, so both are given here explicitly instead of silently choosing one.

From Flash to HTML5: the first decade

The first version of the Wix website editor was built on Flash, a technology that was common at the time for creating interactive web content but became outdated over time and problematic in mobile browsers. In 2012 the company made a major switch: an HTML5-based editor that displayed properly on mobile devices and also made it possible to launch the App Market, a marketplace for which outside developers can build extensions for websites. This switch, together with steady growth in the number of users (from 1 million in 2009 to 50 million in 2014 and over 150 million in 2019), established Wix as one of the giants of the global website-building market, alongside competitors such as Squarespace and WordPress.com. In 2012, monday.com, then called DaPulse, also spun off from Wix as an independent company: its product had been developed inside Wix since 2010, and Wix was its first customer.

The 2013 IPO and what came after

Wix went public on Nasdaq on 5 November 2013 under the ticker WIX and raised about $127 million. Even before the IPO, the company operated on a freemium model: basic use for free, with most revenue coming from paid premium subscriptions. In the decade after the IPO, Wix expanded the platform far beyond the basic website editor: Editor X for professional designers who need more precise design control, Wix Studio for digital agencies that manage websites for many clients, and integrated e-commerce and payment tools that made Wix a complete business platform and not just a design tool.

The Base44 acquisition: Wix enters the AI era

In June 2025 Wix acquired Base44, an Israeli startup only six months old founded by solo entrepreneur Maor Shlomo, for about $80 million in cash. The acquisition was considered unusual because of the gap between the age of the acquired company and the size of the deal, and it is explained in detail in the entry on Base44. Only the main point needs mentioning here: Wix did not absorb Base44 into an existing brand but left it running as an independent product within its portfolio, and according to reports Base44 passed $100 million in annual recurring revenue within about a year of its founding. That growth made the acquisition one of the most prominent examples in the global conversation about "vibe coding".

Harmony and Symphony: two AI engines in parallel

Alongside Base44, Wix also kept developing AI capabilities of its own. An AI-based editor with an assistant chatbot was launched in March 2024, and at the beginning of 2026 Wix Harmony was launched: a website builder that combines agentic technology, generative design and "vibe coding" under the Wix brand itself. In August 2026 Symphony by Wix was added, an autonomous multi-agent system aimed at small and medium-sized businesses. According to the company's CEO, Avishai Abrahami, Wix continues to invest in both Harmony and Base44 at the same time, and sees having two parallel AI engines within the same company as a competitive advantage and not unnecessary duplication: each engine targets a slightly different customer segment within the same product family. In May 2025 Wix also acquired Hour One, an Israeli company that produces videos with AI-generated virtual presenters, in order to integrate the technology into its platform.

How big Wix is today

According to the company itself, as of 2026 Wix serves more than 300 million users around the world, and according to its second-quarter report that year, quarterly revenue reached $563 million, up 15% from the same period a year earlier. Keep in mind that these are figures the company itself publishes as part of its quarterly reports to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. They are audited at the accounting level, but the forecasts that accompany them, such as the expected pace of profitability for Base44 later in the year, remain management forecasts and not established facts.

In May 2026 CEO Avishai Abrahami confirmed that the company was cutting its staff by about 20%, about 1,000 jobs, according to Calcalist. The company described the move as a reorganization in light of the changes brought by AI, the strengthening of the shekel and the reduction of management layers.