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Wix co-founder, ex-TikTok exec’s startup raises $10m seed round

Dazl, a new startup founded by Wix co-founder Nadav Abrahami and former TikTok executive Assaf Sagy, has raised US$10 million in seed funding.

The round was led by 40RTY Fund, with participation from Wix and Abrahami.

Dazl, in Israel, is developing an AI-powered platform for building production-ready apps.

About 30 Wix employees are joining the new company, which began development inside Wix and is now moving forward independently.

The company plans to use the funding to further develop its platform.

🔗 Source: Calcalist

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Corporate spin-outs enable focused innovation in rapidly evolving markets

  • Dazl’s emergence from Wix follows a proven pattern, with Abrahami comparing it to Monday.com’s successful spin-out from the same company.
  • Abrahami explained the strategic reasoning: “In order to give the company all the power to succeed, it had to be split up. When this is not the company’s main area, there is a product and technology that started working inside the company and is being brought out as a private company”1.
  • The spin-out brought 30 Wix employees with experience from the company’s early development teams, preserving institutional knowledge while allowing startup-level agility1.
  • This approach allows the new venture to pursue AI-focused app creation without competing for resources or strategic focus within Wix’s broader web-building platform priorities.

AI app creation tools face a critical usability gap between prototyping and production

  • Dazl addresses a specific market frustration where “early tools allowed almost anyone to create prototypes, but users often faced frustration when outputs fell short of expectations”1.
  • The company identified that existing generative AI tools produce “inconsistent and incomplete” outputs, leading teams to “iterate endlessly, producing only partial results instead of complete, launch-ready products”1.
  • Abrahami framed the challenge clearly: “Generative AI can produce prototypes, but it doesn’t yet empower creators to build apps that reflect their vision”1.
  • This gap between prototype and production represents a significant market opportunity, as businesses need reliable tools that can move beyond demonstrations to actual deployable applications.

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