Base44 launches own AI model to escape frontier-model
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- Base44 rolled out Base1, its first proprietary LLM trained on "tens of millions of real user interactions," as part of a push toward full vertical integration.
- Wix acquired Base44 for $80 million roughly a year ago — when it was six months old with eight employees — and the unit has since passed $100 million in ARR.
- Lovable, the Swedish vibe-coding unicorn, hit $500 million ARR earlier this month but still relies on external LLMs, which Shlomo frames as a tech-stack liability.
- Founder Maor Shlomo said owning the model will deliver better latency, cost, and efficiency than frontier models like Opus, with "direct control over compute and inference spend" yielding stronger margins over time.
- Wix announced 20% workforce layoffs recently even as Base44 kept adding headcount, and the unit's $100M ARR still trails Lovable's $500M.
- Frontier labs are closing in: Cursor and xAI (Grok) now both sit under SpaceX, and Claude Code has become a vibe-coding player in its own right — raising the cost of staying on rented models.
- VC Jonathan Userovici (Headline) cited Harvey as a cautionary tale: the legal-tech startup abandoned plans to train its own model, suggesting vertical integration is no sure thing for applied AI companies.
Why it matters: Base44 is betting that vertical integration — owning distribution, data, and infrastructure under one roof — beats renting frontier models, with Shlomo projecting lower latency and cost than running Opus. The risk is real: Harvey already tried and abandoned a custom model, and Lovable's $500M ARR shows how fast rivals can scale on external LLMs.
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