Vercel: A New Name and a New Focus
The company formerly known as ZEIT is rebranding as Vercel, signaling a strategic shift toward building the complete workflow for Jamstack development. The new focus covers the entire lifecycle, from building and previewing to shipping static sites.
Announced alongside the rebrand is $21M in Series A funding, led by Accel and CRV, with participation from Naval Ravikant, Nat Friedman, Jordan Walke, and additional backers.
From Deployment Tool to Platform
ZEIT was founded in 2016 with the aim of letting solo developers deploy applications without wrestling with web infrastructure. The founders observed that modern development imposes a heavy burden of arcane concepts—DNS configuration, SSL certificates, TCP/IP networking, HTTP protocols, CDN caching, and edge networks—which collectively generate significant friction.
Their initial solution, the now tool, was designed specifically to strip away that complexity. Now, under the Vercel name, that mission expands from a single deployment utility into a broader platform for the entire Jamstack development journey.
