Wix says Base44, the vibe-coding app builder it bought in June 2025, is “now nearing $250 million of ARR”, according to the third-quarter results it filed with the SEC on 10 November. In the same quarter, free cash flow fell to $74.5 million from $127.3 million a year earlier, a 41% drop by our arithmetic.
Marketing spending rose faster than revenue. Non-GAAP sales and marketing expenses rose to $185.5 million from $127.2 million, while revenue rose to $570.2 million from $505.2 million. By our arithmetic, the $58.2 million increase in marketing equals about 90% of the $65.0 million increase in revenue.
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The key insight: Wix says Base44 is nearing $250 million of ARR, up from $100 million in early March 2026, and that its non-GAAP gross margin reached 58% in the third quarter. Non-GAAP sales and marketing rose 46% to $185.5 million, and free cash flow fell to $74.5 million from $127.3 million.
Revenue was $570.2 million, up 13% from a year earlier, and bookings were $573.0 million, up 11%. Wall St Engine cited consensus estimates of $566 million for revenue and $1.39 for adjusted earnings per share; Wix reported non-GAAP diluted earnings of $1.42 a share.
Total ARR reached $2.021 billion at the end of September, up 15%. Creative Subscriptions revenue, which includes Base44, rose 14% to $406.7 million, and Business Solutions revenue rose 10% to $163.5 million. On a GAAP basis, Wix posted a net loss of $13.7 million.
Non-GAAP gross margin was 69%, flat from a year earlier and up two percentage points from the second quarter. Non-GAAP operating income was $68.7 million, a 12% margin, against $89.9 million and 18% a year earlier, according to the reconciliation tables in the Shareholder Update.
Wix added $65.0 million of quarterly revenue and $58.2 million of non-GAAP sales and marketing spend, while free cash flow fell 41%. Source: Wix Q3 2026 results (Form 6-K Ex. 99.1) and Shareholder Update, 10 Nov 2026; differences and percentage changes are our arithmetic.
Announcements: ๐น Base44 ARR: Nearing $250M ๐น Studio Two: First-of-its-kind advanced AI-powered open ecosystem creation platform launched
Key Updates: ๐น Leadership: Nir Zohar appointed Co-CEO effective immediately
Comments: ๐ธ โBase44, our biggest bet, continues to outperform expectations, driven by our leading product, clear strategy and relentless execution underpinned by aggressive and necessary investmentsโ
๐ธ โWe believe our strategic investments in Base44 are positioning us to capture share in a rapidly expanding market โ with Base44 ARR today close to $250 million.โ
Wall St Engine posted this summary of Wix’s third-quarter results at 10:22 UTC on 10 November, including consensus estimates of $566 million for revenue and $1.39 for adjusted EPS. This piece uses the post for those estimates only; every Wix figure above comes from the company’s SEC filing and Shareholder Update.
The Marketing Push
The Shareholder Update says non-GAAP S&M expenses “were $185.5 million in Q3’26, an increase of 46% y/y and 7% q/q”, or 33% of revenue. It ties the spending to Base44: “we accelerated marketing investments in Q3’26 to support the strong demand volume we saw for Base44”.
Free cash flow excluding restructuring costs was $99.6 million, or 17% of revenue, after about $25.2 million of restructuring payments. For the full year, Wix now expects free cash flow margin excluding acquisition-related and restructuring costs of about 16%, down from the high teens it expected before, “primarily due to accelerated sales and marketing investments in Base44”.
Wix says the effect of the spending lags its revenue line, because “the majority of Base44 subscriptions” are billed monthly. It expects “the strong ARR momentum this year to gradually translate into bookings and revenue dollars over the coming quarters”.
What the Filing Says About Base44
Wix’s investor slides say Base44 reached $100 million of ARR in early March 2026. Base44’s non-GAAP gross margin was 58% in the third quarter, up from near zero in the first quarter, and Wix expects it to exit the year above 60%.
The company credits its own model, Base 1, for the change. The update says AI inference and compute costs attributable to free users “decreased by more than 50% sequentially”, and that Wix now expects total AI costs for all free and paid users “to represent less than 30% of total bookings in 2H”, against an earlier 30-40%.
Annual plans accounted for more than 20% of subscriptions bought by the September 2026 Base44 cohort, up from about 5% a year earlier. Wix also flags a working capital headwind of about $10 million in the fourth quarter “related to the prepayment of GPUs required to run our models for the next couple of years”.
Base44’s figure is dated 10 November while the $2.021 billion total is as of 30 September, so the comparison is approximate: on those two numbers, Base44 would be about 12% of Wix’s total ARR, by our arithmetic.
Leadership and Headcount
Nir Zohar, Wix’s co-founder and president, was appointed co-CEO alongside Avishai Abrahami, effective immediately. The release says Zohar will lead business strategy, go-to-market and operations, and Abrahami product, AI and technology.
Wix ended the quarter with 4,121 employees, 250 fewer than in the prior quarter, including about 300 at Base44. The update says AI automation and self-service tools resolve about 80% of support inquiries.
As we read the filing, Wix is funding Base44’s growth through its income statement: the $58.2 million rise in non-GAAP S&M equals about 90% of the $65.0 million rise in revenue, by our arithmetic, while non-GAAP operating income fell to $68.7 million from $89.9 million.
As we read the Base44 disclosures, the gross margin gain rests on Wix’s own model: the update ties the move from near zero to 58% to Base 1 and to lower inference costs, rather than to pricing.
Lior Shemesh, CFO of Wix, 10 November 2026
“We expect Base44 non-GAAP gross margin to exit the year above 60% and approach that of our core Wix business next year”
Three Implications
FOR CASH Wix now expects a full-year free cash flow margin excluding acquisition-related and restructuring costs of about 16%, down from the high teens, citing Base44 marketing.
FOR COMPUTE Wix flags a working capital headwind of about $10 million in the fourth quarter from prepaying GPUs to run its models.
FOR REVENUE TIMING Wix says most Base44 subscriptions are billed monthly, and expects ARR to turn into bookings and revenue gradually over the coming quarters.
The framework argues: “Inference is a revenue engine: continuous, distributed across millions of applications and agents, incurring marginal cost with every query.”
As we read it, Base44 shows that marginal cost on a company’s own books: Wix says moving traffic to its Base 1 model cut free-user inference costs by more than half in a quarter, and lifted Base44’s gross margin to 58%. The framework predates these results and does not discuss Wix.
What Is Not Established
Wix does not report Base44 revenue, user numbers or marketing spend as separate lines, so how much of the S&M increase went to Base44 is not stated. The conference call and the share-price reaction were not reviewed for this piece.
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Base44 is nearing $250 million of ARR, up from $100 million in early March, and its gross margin has risen to 58%. In the third quarter, Wix’s total increase in marketing spend equalled about 90% of its revenue increase, by our arithmetic, and free cash flow fell 41%, a figure that includes about $25.2 million of restructuring payments.
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A note on sourcing. Results, Base44 and outlook figures are from Wix’s Form 6-K results exhibit, Shareholder Update and investor slides of 10 November 2026. Consensus estimates are as cited by Wall St Engine. Differences, shares and percentage changes not stated by Wix are our arithmetic.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
