Convex reels in $57M for its AI-optimized application backend
Developer tooling startup Convex Inc. today disclosed that it has closed a $57 million funding round led by Insight Partners.
Etna Labs, Andreessen Horowitz and Spark Capital also contributed to the Series B investment. It brings Convex’s total outside funding to $110.5 million.
Convex was founded in 2021 by former members of Dropbox Inc.’s infrastructure engineering team. It offers an application backend, a collection of building blocks that companies can use to develop custom software. Using pre-packaged components is significantly faster than creating everything from scratch.
Convex is not the only application backend on the market. According to the company, one of its platform’s main differentiators is that it’s optimized for artificial intelligence agents. In particular, it helps developers who build Convex-based applications with AI agents mitigate hallucination-related coding errors.
AI agent coding mistakes sometimes take the form of type errors. Those are malfunctions that emerge when a piece of data is inputted into a code snippet that can’t process it. For example, an application might send a support ticket to a function designed to calculate average product prices.
Convex includes a database that developers can use to store their applications’ information. According to the company, the database mitigates type errors by replacing standard SQL queries with TypeScript code. That’s a version of JavaScript equipped with mitigations against type errors.
Convex’s platform also reduces the risk of AI hallucinations in other ways. It implements ACID, a set of best practices designed to avoid issues such as unintended database overwrites. Additionally, Convex automates certain advanced coding tasks that can pose a challenge for AI agents.
Many applications contain interface elements that visualize business data and must refresh when that data changes. For example, a stock ticker widget must keep up with share price changes. Facilitating such real-time data syncing historically required a significant amount of custom code.
Convex provides the necessary code in a pre-packaged form. That removes the need for AI agents to generate it from scratch and thereby avoids the associated hallucination risk.
Convex provides its database alongside several other application modules. The platform includes a search tool, an authentication mechanism and a file storage system. A RAG, or retrieval-augmented generation, feature makes it possible to extend AI agents’ knowledge base with custom datasets.
“Agents reach for the first thing that works, and on most backends the first thing that works is subtly, silently wrong. You’ll find out weeks later, in production,” said Convex co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Jamie Turner. “We spent our careers at Dropbox learning what it takes to make a promise to hundreds of millions of users and keep it, every time. Convex is that discipline packaged as a product.”
Convex disclosed today that its platform powers nearly 2 million applications. Its customers include OpenAI Group PBC, Zapier Inc. and other major tech firms. The company will use its new funding to hire more employees and enhance its platform.
Photo: Unsplash
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