James Pearce(@jamespearce):There have been a few exits for “sync infra” companies recently. I am super excited for the people involved, many of whom I know well. There’s a point-of-view that these are just aqui-hires, and that there’s no future for “local-first” as a concept for web development. But I don’t buy it. Instead, I think all we’ve learned (or been reminded of) is that building a business around dev tools is hard, especially in an era where classical incumbents have an AI-trained moat. Not that sync is not a valuable first-class principle for tomorrow’s internet. Perhaps the revolution has been slightly delayed, but the principles of local-first as a future ideal to aspire to seem as relevant as ever.

2026.08.22 11:06

There have been a few exits for “sync infra” companies recently. I am super excited for the people involved, many of whom I know well. There’s a point-of-view that these are just aqui-hires, and that there’s no future for “local-first” as a concept for web development. But I don’t buy it. Instead, I think all we’ve learned (or been reminded of) is that building a business around dev tools is hard, especially in an era where classical incumbents have an AI-trained moat. Not that sync is not a valuable first-class principle for tomorrow’s internet. Perhaps the revolution has been slightly delayed, but the principles of local-first as a future ideal to aspire to seem as relevant as ever.