Shopify has acquired Tailwind Labs, the company behind the Tailwind CSS framework, Tailwind founder and CEO Adam Wathan announced Sept. 9 on the company's blog. Financial terms were not disclosed, according to PYMNTS.
Tailwind CSS will stay open source and MIT licensed, and Wathan's team will keep leading and maintaining it and Tailwind's other open source projects with Shopify's support, the announcement said. The framework is installed more than 110 million times a week and styles products including ChatGPT, X, Cloudflare, Reddit and Shopify itself.
Tailwind's commercial side is changing. Existing customers of paid products Tailwind Plus and ui.sh keep their access, but the company has closed new sign-ups and is winding down its website template business as the team's focus shifts to Tailwind CSS development inside Shopify, according to the announcement.
At Shopify, the Tailwind team will work on tools that help merchants design and host custom storefronts, manage sales and inventory, and build shopping, checkout and order tracking experiences, PYMNTS reported.
"We're joining Shopify to give Tailwind a stable long-term home where it will be actively maintained for the millions of people who depend on it," Wathan said. Shopify president Harley Finkelstein said in a statement carried by PYMNTS: "Shopify was one of the first companies to bet on Tailwind at scale. Years later, 110 million installs a week and it powers half the internet. Now it has a permanent home."
Tailwind is infrastructure for a huge share of the web's front end, and infrastructure that depends on one company staying funded and interested is a risk every team using it has been quietly carrying since Tailwind Labs was founded in 2017. A deep-pocketed corporate parent removes that risk for now. But Tailwind's roadmap now answers to Shopify's incentives too, and builders who lean on it should watch what gets prioritized once that shift settles in.