Convex (software)

Convex is an American software company that develops a reactive backend as a service platform for web application developers. Founded in 2021 and headquartered in San Francisco, Convex provides a serverless database, backend runtime, and real-time synchronization infrastructure that allows developers to write backend logic in TypeScript without managing servers or traditional database infrastructure.

Background

Convex, Inc. was founded in 2021 by Jamie Turner (CEO), James Cowling (CTO), and Sujay Jayakar. All three founders are former engineers at Dropbox, where they worked on large-scale storage systems, including a project to migrate billions of gigabytes of user files from Amazon Web Services onto Dropbox's own internal infrastructure. Cowling studied distributed systems at MIT.

Product

Convex's platform functions as a global state management layer for web applications. Its architecture integrates a reactive document database, serverless backend functions, and client synchronization libraries into a single TypeScript-native environment.

Database

The Convex database is a document-oriented store that developers interact with through typed TypeScript functions rather than SQL. Queries run server-side and are automatically tracked at the field level, enabling the system to determine precisely which clients need to be updated when underlying data changes. Andreessen Horowitz partner Martin Casado, describing the problem Convex was designed to solve, noted that traditional databases are built for storing and querying data and were not designed for global state management.

Real-time synchronization

When a mutation commits, Convex automatically determines which subscribed clients are affected and pushes updates via WebSocket, without requiring manual cache invalidation or polling. The design allows frontend developers to treat remote application state similarly to local React component state.

Convex Components

Convex Components are modular, independently installable TypeScript building blocks for common backend patterns, including rate limiting, work queues, real-time presence, and retrieval-augmented generation pipelines. Components maintain isolated tables and transactions to prevent schema conflicts when installed alongside existing application code.

Vector search and AI applications

In 2023, Convex added vector search capability to its platform. By 2024, the company reported that approximately 80 percent of projects built on Convex were AI applications, reflecting broader growth in AI-driven software development.

AI Town

In August 2023, Convex collaborated with Andreessen Horowitz to release AI Town, an open-source simulation environment in which autonomous AI agents inhabit a virtual town, interact with one another, form memories, and carry on conversations. The project, built on Convex's backend, was designed to serve as a reference architecture for developers building multi-agent AI systems. The project attracted significant attention in the developer community and was among the most-discussed open-source releases on GitHub during the period following its launch.

Open source

In March 2024, Convex released an open-source version of its backend, making the core platform available for self-hosting as an alternative to its managed cloud service. The release was intended to address developer concerns about vendor lock-in and to allow the broader community to contribute to the platform's development.

Funding

In late 2021, Convex raised a seed round from investors including Neo Ventures, Netlify's Jamstack Innovation Fund, General Catalyst, and SV Angel.

In April 2022, Convex announced a $25.7 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Netlify, Neo, and solo investor Elad Gil. The round valued the company at $128 million. Andreessen Horowitz partner Martin Casado joined the board of directors. Notable angel investors included Nat Friedman (former CEO of GitHub) and Ram Shriram (board member of Alphabet Inc.).

In November 2025, Convex raised an additional $24 million in a round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Spark Capital, with participation from angel investors including Adam D'Angelo, Drew Houston, and Theo Browne. At the time of the announcement, the company reported that its customer base, project count, and revenue had grown more than tenfold over the preceding nine months.

Competitive landscape

Convex operates in the backend as a service and serverless infrastructure market. Competitors include Google Firebase, AWS Amplify, Supabase, and PlanetScale. Unlike Firebase, which uses proprietary query methods and client SDKs, Convex centers its developer experience on TypeScript and functional abstractions. Unlike Supabase, which exposes PostgreSQL directly, Convex abstracts the database layer behind typed function calls.

See also

• Backend as a service
• Firebase
• Supabase
• Serverless computing
• Reactive programming