Base44, the Tel Aviv vibe-coding startup acquired by Wix for $80mn, has launched Base1 — its first proprietary AI model trained on tens of millions of real user interactions from its platform. The move makes Base44 the first app-creation platform to ship its own model rather than renting from frontier labs like OpenAI or Anthropic. The strategic rationale is twofold: better margins by controlling inference costs, and defensibility against frontier labs like Anthropic (Claude Code) and design tools like Figma that are encroaching on the vibe-coding space. CEO Maor Shlomo argues specialisation on app-building data will outperform general-purpose frontier models at that specific task. Skeptics note that rival Lovable has reached $500mn ARR without its own model, and that frontier models keep improving. Base1 is currently described as 'demonstrating competitive performance' rather than outright beating the models it replaces.
