Convex

Convex offers a reactive backend platform for application developers, combining a database, server functions, workflow orchestration, real-time sync, search and file storage in a single TypeScript-based product intended to remove integration glue code. The Convex database is described as document-relational: tables hold JSON-like nested documents with auto-generated IDs used to create relations, and developers query and write data through TypeScript query and mutation functions rather than SQL or an ORM. Mutations execute as ACID transactions with automatic retry on conflict; queries are pure read functions to which clients subscribe. Actions provide general-purpose serverless functions that may make network calls (for example to LLMs or email providers), and a scheduler plus cron jobs support durable background workflows.

A sync engine reruns query functions whenever any input they depend on changes and pushes updated results to subscribed clients over WebSockets, keeping frontend state consistent with the database. Client libraries exist for React, Next.js, Remix, TanStack Start, React Native, Vue, Nuxt, Svelte, Node.js, Bun and script tags, and for JavaScript, Python, iOS Swift, Android Kotlin and Rust; HTTP access is also available without automatic subscriptions. The cloud offering runs on PlanetScale with MySQL as its persistence layer, while the open-source, self-hostable version supports SQLite, Postgres and MySQL, using serializable isolation and optimistic concurrency control.

The company packages higher-level capabilities as installable Convex Components, including Workpool (managed parallel background work with retries and backoff), Workflow (checkpointed, resumable multi-step processes) and Agents (threads, context and vector search for AI agents), plus integrations with Stripe, Resend, Twilio, WorkOS and PostHog. Enterprise features listed include SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, RBAC and SSO, with VPC deployment announced as coming soon.

Founding story

Convex was founded by former Dropbox infrastructure engineers. CEO Jamie Turner was a Senior Engineering Director at Dropbox leading storage, databases and business platform engineering, and earlier was Head of Engineering at Bump, which was acquired by Google. CTO James Cowling was a Senior Principal Engineer at Dropbox and technical lead on the multi-exabyte storage system that migrated Dropbox off S3; he holds an MIT PhD supervised by Barbara Liskov with research on distributed consensus and transaction processing. The company states a mission to change how software is built on the internet and who gets to build it, a formulation it says has been on its team page since it was a few months old with three people, no users and a prototype.

Business model

Convex operates a managed cloud backend service alongside an open-source, self-hostable edition. It markets a paid Enterprise plan for customers requiring larger scale, additional compliance, data sovereignty, public cloud procurement, SLAs and forward-deployed engineering, and has described an ambition to build a marketplace where third-party developers can distribute Convex Components.

Sources indicate revenue from its hosted platform, including an Enterprise tier with a waitlist; specific pricing is not disclosed in the material reviewed. The company has stated a goal of reaching positive cash flow through infrastructure cost optimization.

Traction

As of the November 2025 funding announcement, Convex reported that customer base, project count and revenue had each grown more than tenfold over the preceding nine months, that some startups on the platform had reached tens of thousands of dollars in MRR, and that dozens of companies were on the Enterprise plan waitlist after 12-18 months of proof-of-concept work. By August 2026, coverage of the Series B cited nearly 2 million applications built by close to 500,000 developers and over 1.2 million weekly npm downloads, with customers including OpenAI, Tripadvisor, Solana, Zapier and Reducto.

Latest developments

In August 2026 Convex announced a $57M Series B led by Insight Partners, with Etna Labs, Spark Capital, a16z and Justin Kan participating, to fund core product development, agentic development tooling including Convex Components as sandboxed building blocks for AI agents, work on its reactive state graph, and broad hiring. Earlier stated roadmap items from the November 2025 raise include faster and easier-to-build components with a marketplace, built-in OLAP support for aggregates and exploratory queries, a local-first sync experience, and a scale-up self-hosted open-source edition. Enterprise VPC deployment is listed as coming soon.