Even the CEO behind a buzzy AI coding platform says Silicon Valley is overselling AI.
On an episode of the “20VC” podcast released on Monday, Avishai Abrahami, the CEO of Wix, a web design company that acquired the vibe-coding platform Base44, addressed one of the industry’s biggest debates: AI’s ability to replace traditional software and human employees.
“I would love to say the team in three years, we will be a thousand people in Base44 and a thousand people in Wix, and everything else would be AI agents. I’m not so sure it is possible,”Abrahami said. “I think that we all give too much credit for AI and what it can do.”
He added that AI is not doing well “for a lot of the things” at detailed levels.
The CEO said that vibe coding, for example, was far from a perfect solution. Wix bought Base44 for $80 million last year, and Abrahami said it has invested $200 million into the platform.
“You try to build anything very complicated, it’s hard when you’re trying to do visual editing. It’s really annoying,” he said. “You’re not going to vibe code Shopify no matter how good you are.”
In another example, Abrahami said the company tried several times to buy AI customer support systems but had to build its own after being disappointed with the off-the-shelf options. He also said that he is not prioritizing swapping human customer support with AI.
“I would not be that concerned with LLM replacing every kind of white-collar jobs,” he said. “It’s not that smart. It keeps making silly mistakes. It’s not very good.”
Abrahami’s comments follow a rough year for Wix. Its shares have fallen almost 50% as investors question whether AI-powered website builders will erode its core business.
Wix is in a unique position compared to other software providers: While its stock is being punished by industry-wide “SaaSpocalypse” fears, it has reported double-digit revenue growth from Base44.
Read the full article here
