Cloudflare Acquires Deno for Workers Platform
Original: Cloudflare acquires Deno to improve its Workers programming model
Why This Matters
Cloudflare absorbing Deno's runtime expertise signals a push to standardize Workers beyond its own platform.
Cloudflare announced Friday it is acquiring Deno, the startup co-founded by Node.js creator Ryan Dahl. Terms were not disclosed. Deno had raised $26M total, including a Sequoia-led Series A.
Cloudflare is buying Deno, the startup behind the JavaScript/TypeScript runtime of the same name. The deal was announced Friday, with no financial terms disclosed. Deno was co-founded by Ryan Dahl — the original creator of Node.js — and Bert Belder, and had raised $26 million in total funding, including a Series A led by Sequoia.
Cloudflare principal engineer Kenton Varda said the acquisition will be used to improve the Workers programming model, the platform that lets customers build and deploy software directly on Cloudflare's global network. A key factor in the deal: Deno recently open-sourced celld, an implementation of Workers, which Varda said "delighted" the team.
Varda also pushed back on claims that Workers' design was meant to create vendor lock-in, arguing that open source and portability are "good business." Dahl framed the move plainly: his team is "joining Cloudflare to make the Workers programming model a mainstream way to build servers."