Wix's Founder Says Trust, Not Features, Protects Salesforce From AI

Avishai Abrahami, the founder and chief executive of Wix, the company that helps small businesses build websites, was asked about low valuations for makers of business software at a time when investors talk as if AI tools that build software from a simple description, often called vibe coding, will replace them.

Abrahami said he strongly disagrees, at least for some companies, and he pointed to Salesforce, which sells software for tracking customers and sales. “You have huge banks, huge companies that actually allow Salesforce to hold all of the customer data because they trust Salesforce,” he said.

What he meant, he argued, is that Salesforce’s most valuable product is not its customer records software, known as CRM. It is permission. Big banks and large companies let Salesforce store all of their customer information inside its systems, along with added functions from its marketplace of extra tools, because they believe it will keep that data safe.

No quick AI project can copy that relationship, in his view. He put it as a test of alternatives. What other outside platform, he asked, would a bank like JP Morgan trust with its customer data outside its own locked down, secure computer area. “The answer is none,” he said. “They don't trust anybody else with that. But they do trust Salesforce, right?”

That trust, he argued, is massive, and extremely hard to change.

Abrahami added a limit himself. Not every software company has that same shield, he said. Atlassian, which makes tools for software developers, worries him more because its own customers are developers, and developers are the people most likely to build replacements with code themselves.