@samwillis
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Building something @databricks & @neondatabase. Prev co-founder @ElectricSQL (acquired by Databricks). Started https://nitter.cf/t.co/pDO5k5Epeu, co-creator of @tan_stack DB.
London UK
Joined May 2007
- Tweets3.6K
- Following844
- Followers3.8K
- Likes7.3K
Pinned Tweet
My overriding thought going into 2026:
Problems you thought were out of reach no longer are.
Pick a problem 100x harder than you thought possible to tackle alone, and run with it.
Start now. AI will catch up and make it possible.
Sam Willis retweeted
We’re building some really amazing stuff here. Sync for Neon is going to be big! 🔥
I’m very excited about this. Coming next to the Neon backend: realtime.
Sync is incredibly hard to get right - especially if the goal is to make it great to work with, support as many database query use cases as possible, and scale well.
Sync coming to Neon was probably obvious to many after our announcement that the Electric team is joining Databricks but we can finally announce it officially today!
The Electric team is building sync for Neon. I asked @thruflo about joining Databricks and their first few weeks at the company: neon.com/blog/electrifying-n…
A little bit of a tease of what we're doing to *Electrify* Neon with realtime... 👀👀
Coming soon!
I’m very excited about this. Coming next to the Neon backend: realtime.
Sync is incredibly hard to get right - especially if the goal is to make it great to work with, support as many database query use cases as possible, and scale well.
Sync coming to Neon was probably obvious to many after our announcement that the Electric team is joining Databricks but we can finally announce it officially today!
The Electric team is building sync for Neon. I asked @thruflo about joining Databricks and their first few weeks at the company: neon.com/blog/electrifying-n…
Sam Willis retweeted
The @neondatabase team are all in London this week, and we're hosting a meet-up this evening.
Come join us to talk about, anything dev/ai, all the new features of Neon, along with maybe a sneak peek of something new.
luma.com/neoncom-0ce4
The @neondatabase team are all in London this week, and we're hosting a meet-up this evening.
Come join us to talk about, anything dev/ai, all the new features of Neon, along with maybe a sneak peek of something new.
luma.com/neoncom-0ce4
Since we joined, I've had the pleasure of seeing this ship from the inside 🔥
Neon is the backend for apps & agents you've been looking for, built on the best database platform, from the most awesome team.
And there's more to come! 😉👨🍳
Sam Willis retweeted
Today @neondatabase Auth, Object Storage, Functions, AI Gateway are GA. Connected to Lakebase Postgres. Give it to your agents 𝚗𝚙𝚡 𝚗𝚎𝚘𝚗 𝚒𝚗𝚒𝚝
Sam Willis retweeted
What does a backend need?
Neon now has object storage, long-running functions, Databricks‘ AI Gateway, and managed Better Auth next to Postgres.
Build REST APIs, file upload, MCP servers, Discord bots, agent endpoints and full control planes on Neon 💚
npx neon@latest init
Looking forward to @cursor_ai Compile London tomorrow, should be an awesome event!
Sam Willis retweeted
👋 Say hello to @TinyJoin, a tiny relational database for browser apps.
Built in Rust, and hosted as WASM on a worker thread, it's designed for rich local-first apps - and to challenge a few of the web's dated architectural assumptions.
`npm create tinyjoin@latest` to give it a test drive. And tinyjoin.org for more info.
Sam Willis retweeted
With personal software, you want hundreds of free projects. Neon can deliver 🫡
Am I reading @neondatabase pricing correctly? It's 5 GB of egress per project on the free tier and you can have 100 projects? Whereas @supabase gives 5 GB total? And then paying Supabase gives you 250 GB of egress total and Neon gives 500 GB per project. What am I missing here?
1. I'm pro AI, I use it every day.
2. "Bad" is a spectrum, don't fixate on "it will kill us all" - there is a lot of "bad" AI can do now, and in the near term, that would be good to avoid.
3. There are a lot of other things that can do "bad" that are normal and we use every day.
The thing that replaces GitHub won't look like GitHub, in any way.
It won't show code, it won't have a diff view, it may not even have issues and PRs.
It will be a platform for everyone (as in not developers) to share their creations, and for AI agents to collaborate on them.
Slightly weirded out that my feed is full of simulated flys that have been trained to do things...
To afraid to ask.
I think governments will heavily regulate AI capable hardware.
Restricting the distribution of models is next to impossible.
Restricting access to hardware is easy.
FUD that's spreading around how dangerous AI is (TBD IMHO), will push politicians in one direction - lock it down.
Come hang with me and the @neondatabase team! 🍻
Maybe get a sneak peak of something... 🤫
London 🍻
luma.com/neoncom-0ce4
Sam Willis retweeted
We’re hiring DX, product, and systems engineers for Neon at Databricks - DM me!
During a panel at @convex's Abstract we were asked what advice we'd give to folks entering the industry.
Don't start a company.
Join a team that that you will learn from, and focus on your craft.
This is litrally the first time I've seen something on a social media feed and ordered it.
And I did within about 5 min...
Very much looking forward to exploring this with the kids.
We have a huge news to share today!
Today we are unveiling the first truly accessible RL robot - welcome Microduck
A 25 cm tiny open-source biped with 15 actuators and packed with sensors (camera, speaker, LiDAR, NFC, bluetooth, wifi, etc) that you train yourself with reinforcement learning.
It's also playable out of the box with more than half a dozen fun and playful pre-trained policies to have it walk, sit, crouch, roller-skate, pick up objects with its articulated beak, and recover on its own.
And all for less than $400.
See all the details, play with the simulator and order it at: pollen-robotics.com/microduc…
(video with sound on 🔊)