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Comment by brainless | Hacker News Reader

I do not feel good about this. I really want SQLite (and the Turso re-write of it) to win for tiny apps that people will build more and more with LLMs. Desktop or server. Even serverless.

The core tech is open source so that is good. Will it stay? I guess Turso hosting was not making enough revenue?

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Turso CEO here. We were doing fine.

This is a strategic acquisition and I fell in love with the vision Supabase had for how they would use Turso going forward.

More to come

Thanks but you do understand this makes it hard for folks to select Turso. With all good intentions parent companies kill acquisitions.

Supabase is hosted Postgres with wings. Turso seemed like it would be the same but using SQLite based approach.

So either Supabase now uses the Turso sync + Postgres or something that needs Turso or abandons it. Not sure and I am not asking, just sharing my thoughts.

Love what you folks have been doing.

Or Supabase starts offering "SQLite" (Turso) as they are offering PG today?

yup — we see Turso/SQLite as complementary to Postgres for specific use cases. The blog post doesn't mention it yet, but this will power our smallest instance — "Spark" https://x.com/saltcod/status/2106078176464036044

Did you check out the post? Supabase sees Turso as the answer to workloads not well-suited for Postgres. This seems like a decent Yes, And proposition.

I also have my own doubts about this acquisition, but as I explore sqlite-per-user models I'm also seeing benefits to having some central control plane. I thought they would've made a natural fit on Cloudflare.

No, I truly don't understand that. It is true that some acquisitions fail, but most of the ones you see failing are doomed from the start and are a way for the founder to exit, acquhire, etc.

I had a never-ending host of options at my hand. Turso grew revenue > 5x this year. I had no reason to accept an offer that wouldn't have a great chance of success.

Thanks again, I have hope.

SQLite/Turso fits my own agent/harness mental model very well but I am, as folks in the valley would say, a bit of an anti-capitalist.

I am working on my own agents that are anti-tokenmaxxers. SQLite/Turso is part of the deployed app architecture from my harness. Thanks a lot for taking the time.

> I guess Turso hosting was not making enough revenue?

I would guess it's more that the founders want to exit before AI replaces them. (Based on the doom-and-gloom narrative in tech right now...)

lol

I am fully onboard with LLM generated code if that is what you mean. I literally get client work titled "Need Claude led Engineer". SQLite is a great option for the LLM enabled future.

> Turso will continue operating, with a clear path into the broader Supabase ecosystem as workloads grow.

You mean, it has never happened that an acquiring company said this and then closed the acquired tech?

I has happened, but supabase has a history of keeping things open source and Turso keeping its sqlite-focused mission is the plan.

(disclaimer, supabase employee)

Rob told me you were at Supabase now and I am STOKED to work together again, Paul!

same!!

> The core tech is open source so that is good. Will it stay? I guess Turso hosting was not making enough revenue?

You just answered your own question. Why would anyone pay for Turso if the core of the software is available for free and being licenced permissively under MIT?

Because they don't want to self-host/manage it. It looks like this is an acquisition, not an acquihire, so it's unclear whether or not Turso was making enough to sustain itself or not. There are plenty of companies out there who release open source software and make money off of hosted/managed offerings of it.

Turso CEO here.

We were doing fine.

This is a strategic acquisition and I fell in love with the vision Supabase had for how they would use Turso going forward.

More to come

Liability. Compliance. Chain-of-responsibility. Risk. This has always been the case in business, and it will continue to be the case (at least until artificial intelligence actually replaces that need).

Huh? Supabase is also that. Lots of tech is like this. Parent company makes money from hosting, services, enterprise feature seats, etc.

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