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We accidentally made an AI platform: Jamie Turner
Takeaway
A reactive backend platform turned out to be the right substrate for shipping AI apps with confidence, with vector indexes and component libraries as natural extensions.
Summary
- Convex CEO explains their backend platform (React-style reactive queries/mutations) accidentally became 90%+ generative-AI projects post-ChatGPT.
- Reactive paradigm extends to server-side actions — perfect for AI apps streaming concurrent chains (project names, color palettes, icons) back to clients.
- Added vector indexes to schemas via TypeScript type completions in response to user demand for RAG.
- Launched Convex for Startups discount program; initial cohort heavily GenAI startups.
- Building Convex Components — high-level state-machine building blocks for sophisticated AI workflows co-developed with customers.
backendconvexai-infrastructure
Original description
Recorded live in San Francisco at the AI Engineer World's Fair. See the full schedule of talks at https://www.ai.engineer/worldsfair/2024/schedule & join us at the AI Engineer World's Fair in 2025! Get your tickets today at https://ai.engineer/2025 About Jamie Prior to Convex, Jamie was a Senior Engineering Director at Dropbox, leading the Business Platform and the Storage / Databases groups. Earlier in his tenure at Dropbox, Jamie was a Principal Engineer, launching several significant projects in synchronization and storage with his Convex co-founders James and Sujay. Over ten years before Dropbox, Jamie held leadership positions at several startups, most recently as the Head of Engineering at Bump, a former top-10 mobile app acquired by Google in 2013. Jamie brings to Convex an enduring obsession with databases, networking, and protocols. Over the course of his career, he’s created dozens of related open-source projects, collectively with thousands of GitHub stars and heavy industry use.