Nx, a startup focused on simplifying the workflow for software development teams operating within a unified code repository, has successfully concluded a Series A funding round, securing $16 million in investment. The round saw participation from prominent investors Nexus Venture Partners and a16z.
The infusion of capital will facilitate the expansion of Nx’s flagship offering, Nx Cloud, with the aim of transforming it into a viable alternative to existing continuous integration tools such as Jenkins. According to co-founder and CEO Jeff Cross, Nx Cloud has evolved in response to the changing landscape of remote work during the pandemic. Companies increasingly recognize the drawbacks of segmented development workflows and the advantages of adopting “monorepos,” repositories containing all project assets.
Cross explains, “Many companies are claiming to solve all aspects of developer experience, which overwhelms decision makers with too many choices. Our approach is more prescriptive and narrowly focused.”
Prior to founding Nx, Jeff Cross and co-founder Victor Savkin worked at Google as part of the Angular team, responsible for maintaining the Angular framework for web app development. In 2016, they departed Google to establish an Angular consulting business. During this journey, they identified a pressing need for tools that would simplify the storage of related applications and libraries within a shared code repository, leading to the creation of the open-source build system, Nx.
While Nx’s primary focus is on the JavaScript ecosystem, it is language-agnostic and can support a wide range of programming languages and frameworks. Developers have the flexibility to create private or open-source plugins to enhance support for specific languages or frameworks, similar to the first-class plugins maintained by the Nx core team.
Nx’s central offering is a cloud-hosted version known as Nx Cloud, which is designed to help product development teams accelerate feature delivery. It achieves this by enabling the consolidation of all project components into a single repository. Nx and Nx Cloud employ multiple layers of intelligence to optimize builds, including selective building of necessary components, caching task outputs whenever feasible, and distributing tasks efficiently.
However, while monorepos offer advantages like enhanced code reuse and streamlined collaboration, they also present challenges such as increased storage requirements by default and limited per-project access control. Thus, Nx’s solution may not be suitable for all organizations.
Nevertheless, Nx boasts a growing customer base, with over 15 million installations of the open-source Nx project each month and hundreds of subscribers. Jeff Cross notes significant growth in enterprise customers and software-as-a-service revenue, reflecting Nx’s strong position in the market. With substantial funding and a robust pipeline of enterprise deals, Nx is actively expanding to meet the demands of its growing user base.
