Remix, a startup developing an open source web framework similar to Next.js, has been acquired by Shopify, the companies announced in a joint statement today. The financial terms were not disclosed, but in a blog post, Remix CEO Michael Jackson said Remix will receive “long-term support and support” from Shopify, allowing it to “grow faster” and “its focus on performance and scalability.”
“You’re going to see a lot more” [of the Remix framework] in the wild, powering some of the largest commercial sites on the web,” Jackson said. “In addition, Shopify itself will be using Remix for many projects, and you can expect to see more of Shopify’s developer platform include top-notch support for Remix over time.”
Remix was co-founded in 2020 by Jackson – an ex-Twitter engineer – and Ryan Florence. The two worked together for years creating open source tools around React, a JavaScript library for building app UIs, before deciding to launch the eponymous Remix framework.
One of Jackson and Florence’s most famous projects is React Router, a library for React, which has been downloaded nearly a billion times. It’s no coincidence that Shopify originally used React Router to design Hydrogen, the company’s frontend web development framework for building custom Shopify storefronts.
As for Remix, it is a full-stack web framework designed to take advantage of distributed systems and native browser features while eliminating backend server tasks. Compatible with public cloud environments, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Netlify, Vercel, and Cloudflare Workers, one of Remix’s key features is prefetching – the framework can prefetch elements of a web page in parallel, including buttons and forms, before a user on a link to minimize page loading.
Prior to the Shopify acquisition, Remix had raised $3 million in seed funding from OSS Capital and angel investors Naval Ravikant, Ram Shriram and Sahil Lavingia.
In a post on the Shopify Engineering blog, Dion Almaer, VP of engineering at Shopify, said the purchase of Remix will benefit both Shopify developers and merchants by making improvements to Hydrogen.
“Remix remains an independent and open source framework,” says Almaer. “Remix addresses the challenges that hydrogen-building developers have encountered around data loading, routing, and error handling… Shopify will use Remix for many projects where it makes sense, and you can expect more from our developer platform with top-notch Remix support in the time.”
Remix is Shopify’s first acquisition since Deliverr, the fulfillment technology provider the e-commerce giant bought in May for $2.1 billion. Earlier this year, Shopify acquired Dovetail, which helps brands manage influencer marketing campaigns. The company also recently invested in Single, a music and video app used by many businesses on Shopify, following share commitments in CMS developer Sanity and marketing automation startup Klaviyo.
After a rocky Q2, there are signs that Shopify is starting to weather the economic downturn better. The company posted smaller-than-expected third-quarter losses last week, pushing shares up as much as 17%.
