Avishai Abrahami
Avishai Abrahami is an entrepreneur, software developer, business person and investor. He is the co-founder and CEO of Wix.com, a SAAS website building platform.
Early life and education
Abrahami was born and raised in Israel. Abrahami carried out his mandatory military service in the Israel Defense Forces’ in the Unit 8200 cybersecurity unit. Abrahami left Unit 8200 in 1992 and went to college. He dropped out after three months claiming, "I could not understand why I needed to wake up early and have someone read from a book for me, which made no sense, since I could read it faster at home,"CEO of Wix.com
In 2006, Avishai Abrahami co-founded Wix.com with his brother Nadav Abrahami and Giora Kaplan. Wix.com is a SAAS website building platform that includes a domain name registration, hosting, content management and other business services. When the company was founded, Abrahami became the CEO.In 2013, Wix held its initial public offering (IPO) on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol WIX. On the day of the IPO, Abrahami rang the Closing Bell. At the time of the IPO, the company raised $127 million by selling 7.7 million shares at around $16.50 making the company valuation about $750 million, the highest ever IPO for an Israeli company.
When the company became publicly traded, Abrahami became board chair in addition to his existing role as the CEO.
According to a later interview in The Verge, Abrahami's team at Wix began work on "AI related projects" in 2014 and in 2016 Wix ADI was launched. Abrahami explains that "at the time it was cutting edge algorithms" and that they "learned a lot from the interaction".
In 2016, Abrahami became Honorary Chairman and Mark Tluszcz became chairman of the board. Abrahami maintains an active role as CEO.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Abrahami presided over record growth for the company as saw new customers "moved their businesses online". The company reached $12 billion market capitalization in Summer 2020.
Entrepreneurship
Before founding Wix in 2006, Abrahami led a number of successful startups, including the software company AIT, which he founded in 1993 and sold in 1997.Abrahami's entrepreneurship ventures include:
- 1993-1997: Co-founded AIT Ltd., an Israeli software company, and served as CTO.
- 1999-2000: Co-founded Sphera Corporation alongside Roy Saar.
- 2004-2006: VP of Strategic Alliances at Arel Communications & Software Ltd.
Investments
Abrahami is an active angel investor. In 2022, it was reported that he had stakes in 14 different companies which made exits. He has been an early investor in many startups including:Monday.com
Founder, Roy Man, met Abrahami as an employee at Wix when he started what later became Monday.com. Wix became the first customer and Man explained that Abrahami "helped us identify the challenge of harnessing people at work into a certain direction" Abrahami was an initial investor alongside Insight Venture Partners and others. He joined the board of directors in 2012 and owned a 4% stake in the company at IPO in 2021.
Soluto
Abrahami had invested and was on the board of Soluto, an IT support firm, before selling his share in the business when it was acquired by Asurion in 2013 for $130 million.
Lumen
Alongside Oren Zeev, Gigi Levy-Weiss, Sir Ronald Cohen and others, Abrahami was an early investor in health startup Lumen
Unlimited Robotics
Abrahami was a seed investor in Unlimited Robotics, alongside Micha Kauffman, CEO and co-founder of Fiverr.
Board Memberships
Avishai Abrahami has held board memberships at a number of companies:- In 2012, Abrahami joined as an Independent Director on the monday.com.
- SodaStream: Abrahami was an Independent Director on the Board of SodaStream from 2016 until its sale to PepsiCo Inc. in 2017.
- OpenWeb: As of 2025, Abrahami serves on the Board of directors of OpenWeb.
- Unlimited Robotics: Abrahami joined the advisory board in 2021.
Innovations
Abrahami has overseen the integration of AI into Wix including features like Wix ADI, AI app builder.Abrahami's approach to AI at Wix is to "offload most, if not all, of the hard work from the user," to create "custom AI solutions".