Remix, a startup developing an open source web framework similar to Next.js, has been acquired by Shopify, the companies announced today in a joint statement. The financial terms were not disclosed, but in a blog post, Remix CEO Michael Jackson said Remix will “grow rapidly” and receive “long-term support and support from Shopify to expand”
“You will see more than this [of the Remix framework] “In the wild, developing some of the biggest commercial sites on the web,” Jackson said. “Additionally, Shopify itself uses Remix on many projects, and you can expect more of Shopify’s developer platform to include early Remix support over time.”
The remix was co-produced by Jackson – a former Twitter engineer – and Ryan Florence in 2020. The two worked for years creating open source tools around React, before deciding to start the popular Remix framework, a JavaScript application for building UIs.
One of Jackson and Florence’s most famous projects is React Router, a React library that has been downloaded nearly a billion times. Not coincidentally, Shopify first used React Router, the company’s leading web development framework for Hydrogen Architect, to build custom Supify storefronts.
As for Remix, it’s a distributed website framework that uses distributed systems and native browser features and moves away from back-end server operations. Compatible with public cloud environments including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Netflix, Vercell and CloudFlare, one of Remix’s key features is pre-rendering – the framework can render website buttons and forms in parallel before the user clicks. Link to reduce page load.
Prior to the Shopify acquisition, Remix had raised $3 million in seed capital from OSS Capital and angel investors Naval Ravikant, Ram Shriram and Sahil Lavingia.
In a post on the Shopify Engineering Blog, Diane Almayer, VP of Engineering at Shopify, said the Remix acquisition will bring improvements to Shopify that will benefit Shopify developers and merchants.
“Remix will continue to be an independent and open source framework,” said Almayer. “Remix solves the challenges developers building on Hydrogen have around data loading, routing, and error handling… Shopify uses Remix on many projects where it makes sense, and you can expect to see our developer platform with Remix at its core. Support over time.”
It’s Shopify’s first acquisition since Deliver, which the ecommerce giant bought for $2.1 billion in May. Earlier in the year, Shopify hit Dovetail, which helps brands manage influencer marketing campaigns. The company recently invested in Singify, a music and video app used by many businesses, following equity pledges in CMS developer Sanity and marketing automation startup Clavio.
After a rocky Q2, there are signs that Shopify is starting to weather the economic downturn better. The company posted lower-than-expected Q3 losses last week, sending shares up 17%.
