1013: Cloudflare Acquires VoidZero  🔗 **Source:** [1013: Cloudflare Acquires VoidZero](https://share.snipd.com/episode/be21b279-9fde-45e6-9ec8-804b24069b20) ## Highlights - **Cloudflare Bought Void Zero Not Vite** - Cloudflare acquired Void Zero (the company) not the Vite project itself and pledged funds to the OSS ecosystem. - Wes Bos and Scott stress Vite, Vitest, Rollup, Oxc remain open source and a $1M ecosystem fund supports maintainers. Transcript: Wes Bos Yeah, that's true. So the big news, obviously, that we're going to be talking about, as we said up top, was that Cloudflare has acquired Void Zero, the creators of Void, Vite Plus, Vite, these things that We know and love. And that's big news, even though they haven't acquired Vite itself. Vite is going to remain open source. It has its own team of collaborators. Yeah. Scott Tolinski Well, in fact, they've put up a bunch of money towards the open source part, a million bucks towards it, which is awesome. So don't run to the comments just yet. I feel good about Cloudflare, the company. What do you think, about them acquiring? I feel good about the future of Vite. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, out of all the companies that could have acquired Vite or not, they didn't acquire Vite. Wes Bos I shouldn't say that. Yeah. Void zero. I mean, Cloudflare seems like the best bet to me. I have nothing but good vibes with Cloudflare personally because I have so much stuff there and I tend to like all their stuff. So that's just me though. You know? Yes. Scott Tolinski So let's talk about why. Like why did they do this and why is it exciting? So Vite, we're going to call it Vite. Everyone gets mad that they acquired Vite. We get it. It's a company called Void Zero run by Evan Yu. But they didn't acquire Vite. They didn't. Not the maintainers of Vite even, just the creator. ([Time 0:00:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5c6ee567-592b-4808-a4f6-124bf1c2b469)) - **Vite Plus Unifies Tooling Into One CLI** - Void Zero built Vite Plus, a unified CLI that bundles linting, formatting, building and scaffolding into one tool. - Scott and Wes describe Vite Plus as a single-config convenience they've started adopting for new projects. Transcript: Scott Tolinski Vite Plus is this new CLI tool that allows you, that encompasses everything, right? You got your linting, your formatting, your building, all of that in one single CLI tool, which is fantastic. I've been using it myself for all of my projects going forward. I was going to say, CDR, are you using VitePlus? Speaker 3 I haven't yet. I tried it, but next project, I probably will. Just because it scaffolds everything. You don't have to have a separate config file for everything. It's a single config. So it seems nice. I haven't tried it yet, but it seems nice. ([Time 0:02:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d77de0da-387e-4503-af54-2b6eaa6153cd)) - **Void Framework Was Built On Cloudflare Stack** - Void included a framework called Void and a hosting product tightly integrated with Cloudflare's stack, including routing and DB features. - The hosts say Void's pieces (framework, routing, DB) likely continue but were deeply built on Cloudflare infrastructure. Transcript: Scott Tolinski They launched Vite Plus, which we talked about. And and then they also were working on this product called Void, which was a way to host or deploy applications, and it was entirely built on the Cloudflare stack. Can we call Void a framework? Yes, yeah, yeah, Void was a framework. It was a JavaScript framework that had routing. Speaker 3 It still is, you're saying had, but it still is, right? Scott Tolinski Well, the thing is, it was released private beta, and then they got acquired. And I don't know, but I doubt that they're actually going to release it, because the thing was that it was all built on top of Cloudflare. But from asking them, it didn't seem like the idea was that you could just use this tool to deploy to your own Cloudflare. It was that they were building their own cloud on top of Cloudflare. Wes Bos The framework components, the routing, the DB stuff, I don't think that's going anywhere. When they first told us about it and how integrated it was into Cloudflare, my first thought was, they're going to be acquired by Cloudflare. Scott Tolinski And this was built They're making something that Cloudflare wants. Because now that Cloudflare has acquired them, they have everything. Front-end framework, you can of course use Svelte or React or whatever, but also they have their own thing. Backend, you can use Vue. Yeah, I hear it worked with Vite. ([Time 0:03:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bfdb6dc0-fc24-49a0-a528-2f9630fced43)) - **Cloudflare Now Offers A Complete OneStop Stack** - The acquisition gives Cloudflare a 'tip-to-tail' stack: frontend frameworks, backend, DB, caching, images, queues, real-time and more. - Hosts compare this to Vercel but on Cloudflare, enabling one-stop deployments and tighter LLM integration. Transcript: Scott Tolinski Because now that Cloudflare has acquired them, they have everything. Front-end framework, you can of course use Svelte or React or whatever, but also they have their own thing. Backend, you can use Vue. Yeah, I hear it worked with Vite. They got database, caching, key value, off, images, video. Like, we were talking before this, like, what doesn't Cloudflare have now? Yeah, they got queues. Queues, durable objects, real-time. Some of the stuff is, like, you have to do it the weird Cloudflare way. Yeah. Speaker 3 But it's kind of one stop shop. Yeah, I mentioned they don't have an like off platform like you can't host their users there. You still might be using something else. Scott Tolinski Yeah, they have like Cloudflare access, which is kind of like I use it as an offing to guard a lot of masks. It's more, I don't know, it's like kind of a mix between like tail scale. You could certainly use it for your application. You probably wouldn't. But like, no, you're probably still reaching for like a better off, something like that. And better off is cooked into void. So yeah. Wes Bos Yeah, exactly. Scott Tolinski So they've, they have tipped the tail. Wes Bos I was going to say is this tip to tail? Is it a one stop shop? What are some other ones? Scott Tolinski What's the vegan tip to tail equivalent? Farm to table. From root to leaf. I see what you mean. Yeah, root to leaf. From root to leaf. Okay. They ([Time 0:04:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3638d3ec-a97b-4941-8598-54028436d270)) - **Infrastructure Is The Last LLM Frontier** - A full stack under one provider makes it easy to hand an LLM a complete platform to 'build and deploy' without third-party integrations. - Scott warns infrastructure is harder for LLMs to own due to global scaling and regulations. Transcript: Scott Tolinski And I think that's exciting because OpenAI a couple of weeks or last, launched this thing called OpenAI Sites, which essentially is like, you can make a site and it deploys to Cloudflare Because Cloudflare has all the pieces. Nice tidy package that they can just hand over to an LLM and say like, build me something, deploy the thing, use my access. You don't have to like reach outside to any sort of third-party service. And I think that like infrastructure is like the last thing that these LLM companies have not come for. And I don't know if they'll ever be able to come for it because it's a lot easier to like vibe code some software versus like scaling infrastructure across all the governments and in countries Of the world. Wes Bos But you'd have to think that with the current way things are working root to leaf you would be able to use an LLM to say build me a site with this stack and it's got everything. Yeah. One-stop shop. ([Time 0:06:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/77aee9f5-e7a0-4cba-b7dd-68b0263f0b12)) - **Consider Void If You Already Use Cloudflare** - If you're already on Cloudflare, consider Void for reduced integration overhead since it bundles framework plus infrastructure. - The hosts recommend this stack for users who prefer a cohesive platform over mixing vendors. Transcript: Speaker 3 That's the biggest sell. Obviously, we've talked about before, it's vendor lock-in. Yeah. But that might be a good thing because they have everything you need. So you're not going to have to shop around. You're not going to have to find different libraries and try to integrate them. Yeah. You use the void framework. You have access to all the infrastructure. ([Time 0:07:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ec04f1c7-db1c-46d5-8e9d-62bd0abb55ec)) - **Vite Team Could Improve Cloudflare CLI Experience** - Cloudflare's existing CLI (Wrangler) is frustrating; Vite team's CLI design skills could improve Cloudflare tooling. - Scott highlights Cloudflare building a new 'cf' CLI and hopes Vite maintainers will help make it delightful. Transcript: Scott Tolinski Cloudflare has been working on their new CLI because Cloudflare CLI Wrangler, absolute dog. It's hard to use. Wes Bos If anybody was thinking that this episode was just a total Cloudflare love fest. No, I've got things to say. No. Scott Tolinski They know that because they've been working on a new CLI called CF, that does everything in Cloudflare. With Wrangler, sometimes you have to go to the GUI and select things, then you got to go back to the thing. Sometimes if you do something in the UI, but then you push something in your config file, it overwrites that. It's just like, no, that's a weird thing. And who's better at writing CLIs than the Vite team? Vite has been such a blessing to the web development scene of just making this frustrating hard stuff delightful and easy to use. And now I hope they do that to the Cloudflare CLI. ([Time 0:08:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f46e5db6-9ff9-4565-8727-daf85b759be1)) - **Hosts Heard About Deal Early And Kept Quiet** - Scott says he knew about the acquisition before many at Cloudflare, which he found exciting but won't reveal sources. - They discuss the internal messaging challenge and reassure listeners the OSS projects remain independent. Transcript: Scott Tolinski Not spill the beans but i was luckily i knew about this before a lot of the folks at Cloudflare knew about it which was kind of exciting yeah so how did that happen well don't get anybody In trouble yeah I don't want to I don't want to get anybody in trouble no I'm not not revealing my sources but yeah that's good um nice I think that's it yeah I'll just mention you want to Speaker 3 Wrap it up yeah I'll reiterate so like Vite, Vite test, R down, Oxy, Vite plus, all of that still open source. They basically acquired some of the core maintainers that were working on it because they were hired by V0. But all of that's still open source, still MIT license, like, none of that is owned by Cloudflare. They're just paying the developers that are working on it a decent salary. The Vite core team not acquired. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Because Vite is separate. Yes. And so and ([Time 0:10:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9d00e97d-60ea-4778-92d9-407a5d6242a8)) - **Open Source Status And $1M Ecosystem Fund** - All core projects (Vite, Vitest, Rollup, Oxc, Vite Plus) remain open source under MIT and maintainers continue developing them. - Cloudflare hired some maintainers and created a $1M Vite ecosystem fund to support maintainers and plugins. Transcript: Speaker 3 I'll just mention you want to wrap it up yeah I'll reiterate so like Vite, Vite test, R down, Oxy, Vite plus, all of that still open source. They basically acquired some of the core maintainers that were working on it because they were hired by V0. But all of that's still open source, still MIT license, like, none of that is owned by Cloudflare. They're just paying the developers that are working on it a decent salary. The Vite core team not acquired. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Because Vite is separate. Yes. And so and that's the other news like a million dollar what do they call it that Vite ecosystem fund. So they didn't acquire that team but a million dollars is going to the maintainers and anybody else working on it. Oh man. A million dollars could buy a little bit of maintenance. Wes Bos I plugins. Scott Tolinski Maybe I could get some money. Like 100k. I would take 100k for my like directory listing there you go plug-in you think they're gonna give you my or i have like a port killing plug-in for v yeah or like if something's running on The port it'll automatically kill it um i would take 100k for that one too so maybe like maybe i'll dip into this fund yeah for the ecosystem sake of the ecosystem i know i do have a v1 that Wes Bos Is a custom DSL plugin for a DSL that went nowhere. And I have to support because I use it on my personal website instead of just using one of the community ones. But yeah, yeah, it's beautiful. Speaker 3 It mentioned in their post, but also say it that like Vite still runs everywhere. That's why we love Vite from the beginning. It kind of like unified the build process, made it super easy to build apps. That's not tied to Cloudflare. You can still use it, build your app, deploy to Vercel, manually run your own server. ([Time 0:10:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0c7051bf-130c-413c-9524-b69012fe1fcf))