[HN Gopher] OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B
___________________________________________________________________
OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B
Author : swyx
Score : 306 points
Date : 2025-05-06 00:57 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| dtagames wrote:
| https://archive.ph/ocXFo
| jeanlucas wrote:
| oh wow, meaning I won't need to pay for Windsurf? What do you
| think will be the monetization path for this?
| nialse wrote:
| Probably the other way around. Windsurf and co (Aider, Cursor)
| drives a heap of traffic to their API from which OpenAI
| actually profit. They just need to have their own tool to lock
| customers in their ecosystem.
| bionhoward wrote:
| Dumb, fail for user freedom, nothing owned by OpenAI can be used
| to ... create AI or anything that competes with them: scheduled
| AI, AI agents, AI tools, AI coding, chat, audio, image gen, video
| gen, shopping, and oh, anything the AI can do, soon social
| networking and hardware, what's left that doesn't compete with
| these assholes?
|
| ChatGPT is a great breakthrough but it's wasted if everyone has
| to worry about a noncompete with it. Seriously, how is it not
| insane to think we should outsource our thoughts and agree never
| to use the thoughts to compete with the thinker? Who wants to
| live in a world where nobody thinks and nobody can make anything
| competitive with their "Saviour Machine?"
|
| Anybody who would join an org like that for a few billion dollars
| is a sell out. It's an AI safety nightmare, too. I'm just
| flabbergasted millions of noobs accept not to compete with
| intelligence, wtf is this world, if you can't use your thoughts
| to compete with your thinker, what is left for you? lol this is
| worse than black mirror
| frabcus wrote:
| Where's this non-compete clause? In ChatGPT T&Cs?
| bartimus wrote:
| They didn't even buy an IDE since windsurf is more like a VS code
| plugin.
|
| So what was it exactly that was worth the 3B that they couldn't
| replicate themselves? Their prompts? Their training sets? Their
| users or user data?
| thomasfromcdnjs wrote:
| I'd guess the prompts and employees.
|
| I've found Windsurf more reliable/efficient than any other
| editors by leagues. How ever they have named the tools, crafted
| their prompts and generally how their internals reason is just
| on the money. I don't think that is easy to replicate,
| iterating on prompts over product releases whilst not pissing
| off your user base constantly is a feat in of itself.
| bartimus wrote:
| Then perhaps it's about bringing in the human talent that
| wrote those prompts.
| XCSme wrote:
| To be honest, Windsurf doesn't work like half of the time, so
| it's more likely their users, the data, and their
| branding/marketing potential.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Windsurf/Codeium plugin is at least 3 years old.
| patapong wrote:
| Maybe time? OpenAI has access to basically infinite capital
| right now, if they believe this will be an importnat market and
| they could save a few months on launching this acquisition may
| be worth it for them.
| KhazAkar wrote:
| Pure speculation without official voice.
| infecto wrote:
| Windsurf probably sees this as a win. I still think they're
| behind in some areas, Cursor's Agent feels faster and more
| responsive but Windsurf nails the rest. The documentation is far
| better, and the overall developer experience is more solid.
| Cursor still feels like a hacked-on plug-in in a broken VS Code
| fork. Even small touches, like built-in Linux install
| instructions, show Windsurf's polish.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| > Its the little things like having baked in instructions to
| install Windsurf on linux.
|
| When I went to download Cursor the other day I noticed that
| they do not offer any .deb/.rpm packages and just offer the
| FlatPak (could be a Snap I'm not sure). This just tells me they
| really dont understand the community and just wanted to ship
| something for Linux and be done with it.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| There's a difference between understanding the community and
| prioritizing investments.
|
| I'm sure Cursor has more than few devs that primarily use
| Linux...
| charcircuit wrote:
| >just wanted to ship something for Linux and be done with it.
|
| This what all developers want for a platform. They can
| release their software and not have to worry about some
| "maintainer" switching out dependencies out from under them
| introducing bugs and crashes in what they shipped.
|
| Cursor ships as an AppImage.
| zero-g wrote:
| Windsurf has plugins for Jetbrains products, for vim, for
| emacs, for Visual Studio (not code), XCode, and even eclipse.
| They try to get as much of the market as possible, while
| Cursor focuses on the core functionality.
|
| Whenever I tried Windsurf Editor, or their plugin for vim,
| and Intellij, it didn't feel polished at all. The basic
| function of autocomplete felt much much snappier on Cursor,
| and even on GitHub Copilot for vim/intellij.
| threeseed wrote:
| > https://www.cursor.com/downloads
|
| Linux builds are in the AppImage format.
|
| Which makes a lot more sense to me than deb/rpm when it's
| just a single executable.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| appimage is more Linux than .deb/.rpm.
| h8hawk wrote:
| In my experience, Windsurf was significantly more effective
| when working with a big codebase.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Windsurf goes looking into the codebase and learning context
| before attacking the problem in my experience. Often Cursor
| tries it's best to just guess the solution without context
| and only really resorts to going deeper when you tell it they
| fails.
|
| I find if I tell Windsurf to look at something it will,
| Cursor I sometimes lay everything out for it and it just
| doesn't even read it.
|
| Ultimately though once you run out of requests on Windsurf
| it's very weak without Claude though, and the top up requests
| are burnt through too quickly.
| pbowyer wrote:
| I trialled Cursor for a month and then Windsurf. Cursor
| read entire code files in while Windsurf would read the
| first 100 lines (or was it 50?), then the next 100, and
| often stop before it got to the part of the file with the
| method in which was needed.
|
| So I went back to Cursor.
| knes wrote:
| Have you checked Augmentcode.com? On reddit/youtube people
| are praising it for how well it handle large codebase
| compared to Cursor and Windsurf
| abound wrote:
| Your other comments indicate you work there, you might
| consider mentioning that.
| dbbk wrote:
| Of course it's a win, dude that cloned a GitHub repo is now
| personally a billionaire
| ramoz wrote:
| Right wtf are we talking about. People are walking away with
| generational wealth.
| __jl__ wrote:
| Here are my two cents on cursors versus windsurf approach:
|
| CURSOR shifted to a more agentic approach even for chat
| requests to reduce input tokens.
|
| Previously, they used the good old RAG pattern with code dumps:
| Request with user added files -> Retrieval (when Codebase
| enabled) -> LLM requests with combined context from user and
| retrieval.
|
| Now they seem to be doing something like this: Request -> LLM
| with tools to search code base and/or user-added files
|
| I get constant search tool calls even for user-added files. Big
| reduction in input token but I think performance suffers as
| well.
|
| WINDSURF is still willing to dump code into the context, which
| gives them an edge in some cases (presumably at a cost of input
| tokens).
|
| Windsurf is willing to spent to acquire customers (lower
| subscription cost, higher expenses for llm calls). Cursor has a
| huge customer base and is working on making it sustainable by
| a) reducing costs (see above) and b) increasing revenue (e.g.
| "Pro" requests for 0.05 with more input and output token).
| crimsonnoodle58 wrote:
| $3B for a fork of an IDE which Microsoft keeps crippling by the
| day by making it's best extensions not work with forks (eg. C++,
| Python, C#, Remote SSH, etc)..
| sidcool wrote:
| That's a oversimplified view. It doesn't matter if it's a fork.
| It has customers and paying ones. And it has a brand. That's
| more than enough. $3 billion would be peanuts for OpenAI
| codyvoda wrote:
| given that they lose >$4B/year I guess everything is peanuts
| mrweasel wrote:
| OpenAI have $40 billion in funding from SoftBank for the
| next two years, so they can afford to buy Windsurf.
|
| Is OpenAI worth the $260 billion valuation... No, of course
| not, they're losing >$4 billion a year.
| dbbk wrote:
| That $40 billion is actively being spent being lit on
| fire to serve all the ChatGPT requests though. It's not
| just sat in the bank doing nothing.
| lolinder wrote:
| If it acquired those customers in an environment where
| Microsoft was not enforcing their marketplace terms it very
| much does matter if they have a plan for supporting plugins
| in the future.
|
| Are Cursor and Windsurf going to ask plugin devs to push to
| their own plugin stores in addition to VS Code's? Will they
| rally jointly behind a single open store? They need to have
| an answer to Microsoft here, and for the good of the
| ecosystem I hope they _do_ have an answer, but customers will
| flee quickly if they lose access to all the proprietary
| plugins and to the broader ecosystem.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > Are Cursor and Windsurf going to ask plugin devs to push
| to their own plugin stores in addition to VS Code's?
|
| They should and probably will soon, and if I were them I'd
| even consider giving plugin devs a cut of their paying
| customer subs if MS gets competitive about it.
|
| > but customers will flee quickly if they lose access to
| all the proprietary plugins and to the broader ecosystem.
|
| Agentic AI coding is more important to customers than
| VSCode's extension ecosystem. VSCode is who has to worry in
| this equation unless they ship the same tools in the next
| few months and heavily subsidize them.
| lolinder wrote:
| VS Code _is_ shipping agentic coding in the form of
| updates to GitHub Copilot. I haven 't used it extensively
| yet since they added agent mode, but it's obvious that
| they're gunning for this market hard, and if I were into
| VS Code I would not personally choose to lose the
| ecosystem for marginally better agent mode.
| Androider wrote:
| VSCode must have over 100 times the user base of Windsurf and
| Cursor combined. All Microsoft needs to do is implement a
| halfway decent version of the context management features
| these forks added. That alone would be enough to halt user
| migration.
|
| For users who've already switched to the forks, the cost of
| switching back is essentially zero, especially if Microsoft
| begins introducing changes that break fork compatibility. In
| that case, the migration direction would reverse almost
| overnight.
| avisser wrote:
| > And it has a brand
|
| Didn't they change names months ago? I know them as Codeium.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| It's easy to downplay as a fork because it's such a young
| product but ultimately if people use Cursor or Windsurf instead
| of VSCode then it is VSCode that needs to worry about being
| upstream from them and Cursor or Windsurf making their
| extensions no longer work with VSCode.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Microsoft "owns" OpenAI, which now owns Windsurf, which
| cloned VSCode.
|
| I think it's going to be fine.
|
| This is xAI buying Twitter, with extra steps.
| bix6 wrote:
| ~$40M ARR makes this a 75x
|
| Cursor yesterday was a 45X for comparison (9B, 200M)
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/16/openai-is-reportedly-in-ta...
| chipgap98 wrote:
| Growth rate matters a lot though. If they are growing quickly
| that multiple reduces quickly
| lispisok wrote:
| Easy to grow when you're selling one dollar bills for 75
| cents
| bix6 wrote:
| You think they can double every year for the next 5 years?
| airjason wrote:
| keep in mind a lot of $3B is ClosedAI paper money, so 75x ain't
| that ridiculous.
| bix6 wrote:
| Do you know the cash / equity split?
| moralestapia wrote:
| I do know that OpenAI doesn't have 3B in cash to just throw
| around.
|
| So, I'd be inclined to believe the vast majority of the
| deal is stock (or whatever that is called pre-IPO).
| arrowleaf wrote:
| Companies don't do these acquisitions with cash on hand.
| It's OpenAI and the whole pool of their creditors and
| investors.
| swyx wrote:
| oai has PPUs
| sidcool wrote:
| Now their models may have limits on how VS code and Cursor use
| it. Competition heating up!
| Androider wrote:
| Windsurf and Cursor feel like temporary stopgaps, products of a
| narrow window in time before the landscape shifts again.
|
| Microsoft has clearly taken notice. They're already starting to
| lock down the upstream VSCode codebase, as seen with recent
| changes to the C/C++ extension [0]. It's not hard to imagine that
| future features like TypeScript 7.0 might be limited or even
| withheld from forks entirely. At the same time, Microsoft will
| likely replicate Windsurf and Cursor's features within a year.
| And deliver them with far greater stability and polish.
|
| Both Windsurf and Cursor are riddled with bugs that don't exist
| upstream, _especially_ in their AI assistant features beyond the
| VSCode core. Context management which is supposed to be the core
| featured added is itself incredibly poorly implemented [1].
|
| Ultimately, the future isn't about a smarter editor, it's about a
| smarter teammate. Tools like GitHub Copilot or future agents will
| handle entire engineering tickets: generating PRs with tests,
| taking feedback, and iterating like a real collaborator.
|
| [0]
| https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/24/microsoft_vs_code_sub...
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1kbt790/rules_in_49...
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > At the same time, Microsoft will likely replicate Windsurf
| and Cursor's features within a year. And deliver them with far
| greater stability and polish.
|
| We've seen this before with Office.
|
| We'll see it again.
| rvz wrote:
| ...as done with Teams.
|
| Microsoft Build is this month [0] and it will tell where they
| are going next (other than price cuts).
|
| I'm expecting disappointment for now, but also expecting
| GitHub Copilot to be upgraded. Then we'll see if they are
| ahead or so far behind.
|
| [0] https://build.microsoft.com/en-US/home
| blitzar wrote:
| They don't even need to be good - just in the bundle you
| (your company) are already paying for and the competition
| can't compete.
| CptanPanic wrote:
| At the speed that AI programming is going, there will be
| something else that they are falling behind of that will
| exist in a year. Just like Agents now, they are adding them,
| but will always be a step behind progress.
| timabdulla wrote:
| I mean, the fact that OpenAI, at the bleeding edge of it all,
| has decided to buy an IDE is a rather strong hint that the
| future of agents handling entire engineering tickets might be
| further out than many believe.
|
| If autonomous agents were just around the corner, then why
| wouldn't OpenAI bet on their own Codex product obviating (most)
| need for an IDE and save themselves the $3 billion?
| bix6 wrote:
| It sounds like the openAI team is overburdened (I guess they
| aren't AI super users yet) so this may be their only option.
| Easy entry into a key segment, at least for now, and locks
| out competitors.
| htrp wrote:
| so much for ai turning everyone at openai into 1000x coders
| conartist6 wrote:
| As a competitor in that key segment I don't feel locked
| out. I could almost jump for joy that this very weak-tea
| move is the most they can do _with that much money_. They
| 're just quintupling down on the technology of 50 years
| ago. There's no threat to me at all here as a creator of
| from-first-principles IDE technology.
| bix6 wrote:
| What are you working on?
| conartist6 wrote:
| It's not too hard to find out, but I'm going to make a
| big announcement in a few days so my official message at
| the moment is "stay tuned"
| bix6 wrote:
| It's one of your GitHub projects?
| osigurdson wrote:
| This is a good point. It is already the case that unless you
| deeply review every Windsurf change you will have zero
| understanding of your codebase. If it gets 1000X better in
| the next 3 years why would anyone look at code at all?
|
| Of course, back to reality. Today, at least in my workflow, I
| use / like Windsurf but it is a small part of what I am
| doing. For any code I want to keep I mostly write it by hand
| (using vim for a very bare-bones / cognitive mode
| experience). For me, the real flow state occurs in vim while
| ChatGPT and Windsurf are great for exploration.
| slt2021 wrote:
| why OpenAI purchased windsurf instead of prompting openai to
| create something like windsurf?
|
| this is the question i am still asking...
| rafram wrote:
| These products are not complicated at their core -- you can
| pretty much just drop in something like Monacopilot [1] and
| be 80% of the way there. But the last 20% is a real slog,
| and it mostly comes down to handling edge cases (bracket
| closing...) and optimizing prompting/context so you aren't
| burning cash. Whatever anyone claims about "feeling the
| AGI," AI isn't there yet.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/arshad-yaseen/monacopilot
| pchristensen wrote:
| Controlling demand (developer workflow and mindshare) is a
| good position if you're trying to build scale on supply.
| rhizome wrote:
| Maybe to avoid the Second System Effect.
| startupsfail wrote:
| They did. They've just released codex (CLI client).
|
| They don't have access to copilot users in general,
| Microsoft and Google does. And perhaps they are realizing
| that Microsoft is hedging them over multiple LLM providers
| and maybe no longer feeding them juicy copilot data, with
| humans in a tight loop, correcting LLMs.
| macrolime wrote:
| They might just want a way to quickly collect data needed for
| fine-tuning the next generation of programming agents.
| robinhood wrote:
| "riddled with bugs". "incredibly poorly implemented". Man, what
| are you talking about? Your comment seems based on nothing but
| what you read online.
|
| Have you used Cursor on a daily basis? I have. Every day for
| six months now. I haven't encountered a single bug that prevent
| me to work.
|
| Moreover, while Microsoft tries to catch up lately, it's still
| very far behind, especially on the "tab autocompletion" front.
| arjunaaqa wrote:
| Plus, cursor & windsurf excel in user experience which is an
| alien concept to Microsoft.
| codyvoda wrote:
| yeah Microsoft could never conceivably develop an
| extensible source available IDE people love so much they
| even fork to build $3B companies on the scraps of.
| absolutely alien!
| Androider wrote:
| I use Cursor in anger every day. The core idea behind Cursor
| is genuinely smart. But the execution is like the classic
| "unfinished horse" meme [0].
|
| Microsoft provides the editor base, foundation models provide
| the smarts, and Cursor provides some, in my experience,
| extremely buggy context management features. There is no
| moat.
|
| [0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/unfinished-horse-drawing-
| flam...
| hobo_mark wrote:
| I have tried (stopped a couple months ago). The Python
| extensions broke all the time while they manually patched
| around the latest MS release a few days later. Syntax
| highlighting glitched every other day requiring a full
| reload. Remote dev via SSH or tunnels also randomly stopped
| working. Liveshare... Essentially they do not own the
| platform their core product is built on.
|
| Maybe it's fine if you only do local development in other
| languages (Javascript?), but I completely swore it off.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| I have. It's ~fine. The only feature difference it has
| currently to vs code that makes a difference to me is
| allowing multiple files for rules.
|
| Meanwhile GitHub web integration is approaching seamless in
| vs code. To the point I often forget I'm in a browser instead
| of the app, until an extension I use doesn't work.
| hobo_mark wrote:
| Does not look like a bit moat, is that different from the
| reusable prompt files feature?
|
| https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/copilot/copilot-
| customiza...
| kasey_junk wrote:
| It's literally allowing those to be in more than one
| file. It's not a moat at all. It's an oversight in the
| plugin.
| serjester wrote:
| As a counterpoint, I also use cursor as my daily driver and I
| have been tempted to switch many times because of the endless
| bugs. Just take a look at their forum.
| prawn wrote:
| I've tried both Cursor and VS Code with AI in the agent/edit
| mode. They both seem similar enough. Is there another mode I
| haven't found where Cursor has a distinct advantage? If so,
| I'd like to try it.
|
| I gave up on Cursor because my trial ran out, while VS Code
| with Copilot doesn't seem to charge me anything.
| karn97 wrote:
| I dont care about a vibe coders experience
| doix wrote:
| > At the same time, Microsoft will likely replicate Windsurf
| and Cursor's features within a year. And deliver them with far
| greater stability and polish.
|
| I agree with the first part, I'm much less optimistic about the
| second part. I suspect they will create something that is
| worse, but cheaper if you already pay for Github/Office
| 365/whatever. Then many large enterprises will switch to save
| money whilst the engineers complain, just like with Teams.
| preciousoo wrote:
| If the VS Code team are delivering the product, I have some
| amount of trust. If it's the VS team, good luck to everyone
| involved
| deburo wrote:
| Indeed, Copilot within Visual Studio is nowhere close as
| good as Copilot within VSCode, and even that is still worse
| than Cursor in my experience.
| pjmlp wrote:
| VSCode is still miles behind for .NET and C++ tooling, have
| a bit of fate on VS team.
| preciousoo wrote:
| What's the use of being miles ahead if you're traveling
| in the wrong direction?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Doesn't look like, given Windows market share.
| troupo wrote:
| Not just Windows. I find .net a better choice for
| backend/microservices than Java, for example
| peteforde wrote:
| Tell us you're not developing for microcontrollers
| without telling us you're not developing for
| microcontrollers.
| ctkhn wrote:
| I use vscode for personal javascript projects but the time
| I spent on a .NET team using VS was an incredible downgrade
| compared to years and years of intellij. I ended up leaving
| because tech debt/bugs kept causing weekly overnight on
| call incidents that we were never given time to fix, but
| when they asked who wanted a Rider license I got myself on
| the list immediately.
| slt2021 wrote:
| VS developers are okay, it is the VS product managers that
| are The problem
| pjmlp wrote:
| They already succeedd well enough that VSCode is the only
| Electron app I tolerate on my private systems, naturally on
| device assigned ones I have less control.
| Aeolun wrote:
| That seems pretty bold. I still find myself switching to
| basically anything but the VS code copilot agent any chance I
| get.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Can you expand on that? What's so bad about VSC's copilot
| agent? What do you switch to?
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I mean they already have. GitHub Copilot was the first LLM
| coding tool before "LLM" was in the lexicon. MS/Github kind
| of squandered their lead with it, but they released Agent
| Mode a few months back https://github.blog/news-
| insights/product-news/github-copilo...
| Szpadel wrote:
| For someone that never used windsurf, what features does it
| have that GitHub copilot does not? Reading their webpages I
| didn't spot any "killer feature" that would convince me to
| switch.
|
| I always felt that cursor and windsurf should be just extension
| to vscode instead of a fork. Was there some missing
| functionality is vscode that was missing? Is it still missing?
|
| There are some extensions that work in this way and allow to
| use multiple implementations depending on task at hand without
| any long term commitment.
|
| I feel like such fragmentation is by artificial just to lock
| users in single ecosystem.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| It can write a lot of code, that works, better than vscode
| can (right now).
|
| It's in a lot of ways the OpenAI story itself: Can they keep
| an edge? Or is there at least something that will keep people
| from just switching product?
|
| Who knows. People have opinions, of course. OpenAIs opinion
| (which should reasonably count for something, them being the
| current AI-as-a-product leader) is worth $3B as of today.
| mliker wrote:
| Windsurf works well with Claude and Gemini models, so if
| OpenAI forces Windsurf users to only use OpenAI models,
| then it wouldn't be as useful.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I doubt they'll restrict it to their own models. The
| amount of business intel they'd get on the coding
| performance of competing models would be invaluable.
| ZeroTalent wrote:
| It's better at coding, but they are essentially paying for
| users.
|
| I would also argue that the product could be built over two
| weekends with a small team. They offer some groundbreaking
| solutions, but since we know that they work and how, it's
| easy to replicate them. That also means they have significant
| talent there.
|
| Hence, they are also buying the employees.
|
| The code base itself is basically worth nothing, in my
| opinion.
| throwaway7783 wrote:
| What groundbreaking solutions specifically?
| ZeroTalent wrote:
| AFAIK their Cascade coding flow implementation was the
| first done well and then copied than most.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| > They offer some groundbreaking solutions
|
| What groundbreaking solutions does Windsurf offer?
| oefrha wrote:
| The differentiator of Cursor is it's way smarter at basic
| code completion than GitHub Copilot. I pay for Cursor instead
| of GitHub Copilot even though I get the latter for free from
| open source contributions, and I made that decision after
| five minutes of usage after using Copilot for what, more than
| a year? I won't even talk about how Cursor guesses where I'm
| going to edit next and makes the correct edit most of the
| time, just the fact that Copliot makes completions that
| result in unbalanced parentheses/braces all the time and
| Cursor doesn't makes the switch a no-brainer; that's not even
| a fucking AI problem, you just need to look around and see
| that function you just completed already has a closing curly
| brace, all it takes is some traditional AST analysis if your
| model is dumb. (Copilot made zero progress on that issue
| during my time using it, but I can't say if that was fixed
| after I ditched it.)
| moi2388 wrote:
| My experience is the same. And the agent mode in copilot is
| terrible, it simply will stop halfway through files.
|
| Or you chat and suddenly it wants to use the azure copilot
| instead because reasons.
|
| Horrible experience.
| peteforde wrote:
| Same. Cursor might be the only tool I've purchased a year's
| subscription to before the end of my free trial.
|
| I've tried just about every model on its own over the
| years, and yet there's something about the Cursor workflow
| that frequently still gives me chills when it shows me
| again that it had clearly anticipated what I would think
| next in a way I just don't experience with other tools.
|
| Holistic seems like the right word?
|
| If it's all smoke and mirrors as some folks imply, then
| it's Penn and Teller level smoke and mirrors. Beware those
| who tell you that they could duplicate anything of value in
| a weekend.
| bn-l wrote:
| Copilot owns the platform, had an amazing head start and yet
| still is the worst option available. I don't mean to be harsh
| but this was a titanic fumble.
| beardedwizard wrote:
| GitHub has been failing upward for more than 5 years. They
| could have totally dominated software development and
| security - failed. Could have been the undisputed champion of
| code hosting - failed. Should have dominated development co-
| pilots - failed.
|
| I actually find it a little reassuring that they can't seem
| to get out of their own way.
| stevage wrote:
| They're not the champion of code hosting?
| MassiveQuasar wrote:
| They were before they got acquired by Microsoft.
|
| The fact that they are is not the results of the
| Microsoft takeover.
| stevage wrote:
| Then I don't understand the inclusion in the list above.
| beardedwizard wrote:
| It's a close call - I make this based on the fact that
| GitHub is viewed as an anti-choice by some in the
| community, a huge change from the "you don't use
| GitHub?!?!" energy they had pre-acquisition.
|
| The MS acquisition traded the developer community to
| briefly appeal to enterprises, then quickly let both
| down.
| ctkhn wrote:
| Both the startups I worked at and the mega corps are all
| on github or moving there from bitbucket. They are in a
| bit of autpilot mode in terms of useful new features
| aside from actions but I can't think of any new bitbucket
| feature since I graduated and started working.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| i concur
| sofixa wrote:
| To be fair, they have been behind the competition for many
| years. Gitlab had extremely good CI, security scanning,
| organisational concepts, etc. for years before GitHub
| introduced their ones (and Actions still has a worse UX,
| and GitHub still doesn't have anything below an
| organisation).
| mdaniel wrote:
| And it being open core (MIT) means spinning up a version
| to test something is _incredibly_ easy. Not exactly
| resource cheap, as it 's still a rails app with multiple
| servers "smuggled" in the docker image, but it is easy
|
| And I have long held that they are _hungry_ , shipping
| like clockwork on or about the 20th of every month,
| showing up with actual improvements all the time
| https://about.gitlab.com/releases/ It seems this month
| brings 18.0 with it, for whatever that version bump
| happens to include
|
| They also have a pretty good track record of "liberating"
| some premium features into the MIT side of things; I
| think it's luck of the draw, but it's not zero and it
| doesn't seem to be tied to any underhanded reason that I
| can spot
| beardedwizard wrote:
| Why gitlab hasn't been able to capitalize on GitHub's
| many failures is almost as interesting as GitHub's fall.
|
| I think the GitHub brand is still stronger and people
| just don't "care" about gitlab.
| twodave wrote:
| Well you're right (especially wrt things like security
| scanning), but you sort of have to include Azure DevOps
| in the conversation nowadays. I think the end goal for
| Microsoft is to get the larger organizations into ADO,
| either cross-pollinate pipelines and actions or just
| replace actions with pipelines at some point, and leave
| GitHub for simpler project structures and public
| codebases.
|
| That's why you won't see a ton of work go into e.g.
| issues/projects on GitHub. Those features all already
| exist and are very robust in ADO, so if you need those
| kinds of things (and the reporting an enterprise would
| want to be able to run on that data), then you belong on
| ADO.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| I can say with a high level of confidence that the goal
| is definitely not to push larger orgs to ADO over GitHub.
| ADO is and will continue to be supported and you're right
| that its project management features are much more
| advanced than GitHub, but the mission is not to push
| people off of ADO and into GitHub.
| no_wizard wrote:
| GitLab UI is inferior IMO, and I've used both quite
| extensively.
|
| I don't like that GitLab lets you nest organizations and
| such, it makes it so painful to find things over time. I
| appreciate GitHub doesn't do this, I view it as a plus
|
| I also disagree about GitLab CI, not that it wasn't smart
| for them to include alot sooner than GitHub, but Actions
| is really good and really easy to get up and moving with.
| I find they run faster, have better features - like they
| can annotate a PR with lint errors and test failures -
| with very little comparative configuration.
|
| GitLab CI yaml is a mess by comparison. GitHub was smart
| to push things to the runner level once a certain
| complexity threshold is hit.
|
| This has been my experience of course, and so much of it
| is really subjective admittedly, but I don't think GitLab
| is truly ahead at this point.
| aravindputrevu wrote:
| I still can't believe how they let Cursor (which is amazing
| until somepoint) take away all the shine.
|
| This reminds me of "big companies moves slow.." line.
| bigbinary wrote:
| These are investment plays a company makes when holding too
| much money, and not a smart move this early in the technology
| imo
|
| Buying competition while everyone's still fighting might
| straddle you with a lame horse
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Cursor ($9 bil) has a higher valuation than JetBrains ($7 bil).
| Think about that.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Tells me that the markets ability to sensibly valuate
| companies is pretty messed up.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| or intellij is beyond its peak while cursor is just on the
| rise
| slt2021 wrote:
| this. valuation is the discounted cash flow of expected
| future cash flows, not the past successes
| xnx wrote:
| These aren't public companies, so the values are mostly
| made up.
| cellis wrote:
| I never did like JetBrains primary product, IntelliJ. It felt
| clunky even compared to Eclipse for Java, let alone VSCode
| for ... everything. DataGrip is the lone standout imo, but as
| of the last update I paid for, it didn't have even basic
| copilot
| rchaud wrote:
| Non-public numbers may as well be pulled out of thin air.
| WeWork was a $50bn company according to its VC bagholders,
| and that was marked down by 80% once they released their
| books to the general public.
| marricks wrote:
| Wow, folks almost had me convinced MS turned a new leaf 5 years
| ago.
|
| Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme: embrace, extend,
| extinguish.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Nah, folks keep giving human behaviours to big corporations
| instead of understanding everyone is in the game for the
| shareholders.
| aero142 wrote:
| If a company can align it's business model with user goals,
| then it can work in the long run. Apple has somewhat
| aligned it's integrated hardware sales business model with
| user privacy. Google and Meta are advertising companies and
| capturing user data and attention will always drive the
| business.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Apple does ads as well, it just keeps all metadata to
| themselves.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Do you consider the Microsoft-managed plug-in marketplace and
| infrastructure to be a private or public resource? From my
| understanding Microsoft has never been vague on the position
| that the plugin marketplace is exclusive to the official VS
| Code distribution, and the TOS specifically forbids forks
| from doing so.
|
| Cursor and other forks have decided to circumvent this, some
| even going so far as to use proxies to bypass restrictions.
|
| I'm not convinced Microsoft owes other billion dollar
| companies free access to a product they've built, curated,
| and supported for over a decade. Plug-in authors are not
| restricted from publishing their products on competing
| marketplaces.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Microsoft is slow af for a company that size. Maybe yeah, they
| are slow because of that size. Don't bet on them out
| accelerating a startup, the evidence so far in the past year is
| that they will stay a year behind every year
| leonidasv wrote:
| The thing is: we should not need standalone editors just to use
| AI coding agents. They could be just plugins, but Microsoft
| does not want to bend the plugin API enough for that. Windsurf
| has a "plugin edition" for JetBrains IDEs that works really,
| really well[0] (they also have a VSCode plugin[1] but it's
| lacking in comparison).
|
| However, given that JetBrains also have their own AI
| offering[2], I'm not sure how long that will last too...
|
| [0] https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/20540-windsurf-
| plugin-f...
|
| [1]
| https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Codeium....
|
| [2] https://www.jetbrains.com/ai/
| owendarko wrote:
| There are already a bunch of open source, free, and popular
| "AI coding agent" extensions for VS Code:
|
| 1) Cline (1.4mil downloads)
|
| 2) Roo Code (a fork of Cline, 450k downloads)
|
| Still a drop in the bucket compared to Cursor in terms of #
| of users, but they're growing pretty fast.
|
| Disclaimer: I maintain Kilo Code, which competes with 1) and
| 2) so I'm pretty familiar with this space/the growth
| patterns.
| htrp wrote:
| How are you differentiating from the cline/roo's of the
| world?
| boleary-gl wrote:
| Our plan is to be a superset of Cline and Roo's features
| (we already have all the major features from both) [0]
|
| We also have our own provider, which means no need to
| bring your own API keys (you can if you like, but it is
| batteries included by default) and we're not charging
| anything on top of the API pricing. Instead of monetizing
| on individual developers, we want it to be free for them
| and make money eventually off enterprise contracts [1]
|
| [0]: https://blog.kilocode.ai/p/roo-or-cline-were-
| building-a-supe... [1]: https://kilocode.ai
| alasano wrote:
| I can't find any reference to Cline/Roo charging anything
| on top of API pricing.
|
| Not sure how they'd do it considering you bring your own
| API keys. Can you link me to a resource?
| oofbaroomf wrote:
| GP didn't say Cline/Roo charged anything on top.
| alasano wrote:
| The comparison table on the kilo site says "OpenRouter
| without 5% markup" and only puts a checkbox next to kilo.
| jychang wrote:
| Roo/Cline doesn't offer Openrouter, markup or not.
| tomrod wrote:
| Continue.dev as well
| Frotag wrote:
| > Microsoft does not want to bend the plugin API enough for
| that.
|
| What doesn't the current API allow plugins to do? I'm
| guessing custom UI stuff that lives outside a panel?
| no_wizard wrote:
| I suspect JetBrains will never limit this. I've yet to recall
| anything in the past where they have done this even when they
| have a similar offering.
|
| In fact, their own AI extension appears to be pluggable in
| and of itself. I think they see the value in being easy to
| adapt different AI solutions to rather than trying to _only_
| provide their own.
| nicce wrote:
| JetBrain's main business model depends on buying the
| editor, and if users still see the overall editor better,
| any AI plugin support will likely just increase the sales.
| silverwind wrote:
| > They could be just plugins
|
| No, they should be LSPs so that they can be integrated into
| any editor, not just VSCode.
| sanderjd wrote:
| They should do this, but this is not the entirety of what
| they do.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| LSP is amazing but also kinda sucks balls. It's impossible
| to run VSCode without a million pops in the corner with a
| million extension errors. It's so bad.
|
| And autocomplete is the least interesting thing an LLM can
| do. Cursor's UX isn't the end game but has lots great
| features.
|
| The ideal UX is still being worked out. It's good that
| different people are building tools to try different ideas.
| rs186 wrote:
| Microsoft has been dragging their feet when it comes to
| updating the LSP spec. Many of their Copilot features are
| done in VSCode, in fact using private APIs that are not
| accessible to other extensions.
|
| I am all for everyone adopting LSP, but the reality is
| harsh.
| iambateman wrote:
| Is windsurf essentially the same as cursor? I didn't realize
| there was something similar for JetBrains but if it's a
| cursor-equivalent for JB that would be wonderful.
| macrolime wrote:
| Yes
| sanderjd wrote:
| I haven't found any of the jetbrains options (including
| Windsurf) nearly as satisfying to use as Cursor. But YMMV I
| guess!
| aravindputrevu wrote:
| I completely disagree and feel MS would never do it. Not a MS
| Employee, but they have moved on from such battles.
|
| They should have restricted the Marketplace several years ago,
| however, they are doing it now.
|
| With C++, they are part of MFC's, they are the legal owners,
| not like Google vs Oracle in case of Java.
|
| Lastly, with AI Code IDEs I think yes, there is a case, the
| need for IDE might be very less. Like a steering on a self
| driving car.
| pjmlp wrote:
| ISO C++ has nothing to do with MFC.
| behnamoh wrote:
| > At the same time, Microsoft will likely replicate Windsurf
| and Cursor's features within a year. And deliver them with far
| greater stability and polish.
|
| Microsoft software quality has gone downhill recently, and I'm
| not going to bet on them delivering something more polished
| than WS and Cursor here.
|
| Side: all images on Microsoft websites are low resolution! it's
| like they don't even check their own website.
| moi2388 wrote:
| 30% of their code is now written with AI.
|
| Their "programmers" are more busy with making blogs and
| videos than functioning tests or technical documentation, and
| they start using JavaScript and Python for everything.
|
| I'm not surprised their quality went to shit. There are some
| pearls left, C# in general is pretty good, and Aspire is
| becoming quite neat.
|
| The latter I think mainly because David Fowler is just a
| great developer
| T0Bi wrote:
| /s?
|
| Because if you're referencing to a headline (without
| reading the article) that was on H a couple of days ago, it
| stated that 20-30% of the code in the repos was written by
| software. Software != AI
|
| To quote wongarsu in the same post: "Considering that most
| of their software has been developed for decades and AI
| assistants have only started becoming useful in the last ~4
| years it would be very surprising if 30% of their code is
| AI written. I doubt they even touched 30% of their code in
| the last 4 years. But what is perfectly plausible is that
| 30% of their code is written by code generators. Microsoft
| has a lot of interface code. All the windows DLLs that are
| just thin syscall interfaces, the COM and OLE interfaces in
| their office suite and everywhere else, whatever Office
| uses nowadays for interoperability to allow you to embed
| content of one product in another, whatever APIs their
| online products use, etc. In the leaked Windows XP source
| code it can be difficult to find the actual source code in
| between the boilerplate files containing repeated
| definitions, and in the decades since then the world has
| only leaned more into code generation."
|
| Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43841868
| mliker wrote:
| Agreed. Especially with tools like Claude Code, which can get
| better over time and remove the need to use Windsurf and
| Cursor.
| tough wrote:
| Github Copilot is pretty much the same UI as cursor on vscode
| already
| cheema33 wrote:
| UI may be close. Functionality is very very different.
| Copilot is $10/month. Cursor is $20/month. I canceled my
| Copilot subscription after 2 months of using both. Compares
| to competition, Copilot has been garbage for quite some time.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| I'd love to know what specifically is better about cursor
| in your opinion? I've used both and have a hard time even
| listing a different feature.
| dontlikeyoueith wrote:
| > Microsoft will likely replicate Windsurf and Cursor's
| features within a year.
|
| Probably.
|
| > And deliver them with far greater stability and polish
|
| That seems ... overly optimistic given MS's history.
| Onavo wrote:
| Their devtools team is surprisingly competent when they
| choose to be. Pre-2015, people used Sublime Text, Atom,
| Textmate, Notepad++, Light Table, Brackets, Emacs/Vim,
| Intellij. VS code single handedly crushed all of them with
| code completion and language servers that require zero
| configuration. Emacs/Vim lost share, Jetbrains (and also
| Eclipse) were forced to release their own "lightweight" code
| editors, and everybody else became mostly irrelevant (except
| perhaps Sublime Text since it has the best native performance
| out of all editors).
| no_wizard wrote:
| I would contend that JetBrains has only grown even with VS
| Code around. They're still more than viable, support things
| on a near similar cadence (and even in some cases, faster
| and/or better) than VS Code gets support for it.
|
| I agree with the rest, they've all mostly lost market share
| or completely no longer exist due to VS Code, but not
| IntelliJ, that platform is going really strong.
|
| Though no doubt, VS Code has pushed JetBrains to rethink
| some things, and be better in general.
| skydhash wrote:
| It's hard to compete with free when free is backed by lot
| of money.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Free doesn't matter here. JetBrains is an established
| toolset that people pay for. They've already been
| competing with free, and free didn't put them out of
| business. In some ways, free likely made business better
| than ever (I know alot of devs that started with VS Code
| and moved to JetBrains for various reasons)
|
| They can have all the money in the world and it doesn't
| mean much in this context.
|
| For while Microsoft is going to invest heavily in a
| Cursor / Windsurf like product and likely do alot to ship
| it in their editors - likely with exclusions or lag times
| between updates on other platforms - there's zero reason
| for Google to do this for example, when they could sell
| through Gemini for Code as an extension across all
| editors.
|
| I don't see JetBrains having issues because of AI
| tooling, for most of these companies, its a boon to be on
| the JetBrains platform. Especially because JetBrains has
| lots of enterprise customers who would naturally be very
| interested in buying AI tooling for their developers. Its
| a natural market
| cheema33 wrote:
| Jetbrains products are used primarily by Java devs.
| Everybody else is slowly moving away. I did.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I don't know a single C# developer who knows about
| ReSharper and doesn't swear by it.
| elevatortrim wrote:
| Microsoft is owing its bad reputation to Windows, Office,
| Sharepoint!!!, Teams (and more?). The quality of developer
| tools and languages (C#, Visual Studio, Code and .NET
| Ecosystem, Azure UI is also great) from Microsoft has been
| flawless (with some exceptions like webforms, or ui code
| generation tools of the past).
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| Their tooling have never been flawless, and it still isn't.
|
| Only for azure devops, there are +6k problems listed on
| developer community website with 500 still not closed for
| the last 6 months. [1]
|
| The complete integration in the ecosystem is what's
| flawless.
|
| Any company with a better product has to fight that
| integration and they almost always lose (Sybase, Borland,
| WordPerfect, Lotus, Netscape...)
|
| 1 : https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/AzureDevOps
| ?ftyp...
| blibble wrote:
| have we used different Visual Studio's?
|
| it was crap compared to Borland's products 20 years ago
|
| and today it's crap compared to JetBrains'
|
| and christ knows how anyone could consider the Azure UI to
| be "great"
|
| other than Teams I don't think I've used a worse piece of
| software
| standyro wrote:
| I wouldn't say that. JetBrains is incredibly bloated and
| has significantly less community support.
|
| I'll agree on Teams being crap though, mostly for how
| dumb it is that they've rewritten it multiple times and
| created a confusing slate of weird versions like "Teams
| (work or school)"
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > Tools like GitHub Copilot or future agents will handle entire
| engineering tickets
|
| Care to place a bet?
| sanderjd wrote:
| I'm frankly very skeptical of your last paragraph. That's not
| at all what seems useful to me. But we'll see!
|
| But I agree with you about the first part, and I think it's
| awesome for me as a user that all this competition to build a
| matter mousetrap is happening right now! I'm not as certain as
| you are that Microsoft will end up building a better version.
| It's definitely one of the likely outcomes. But it's also
| totally plausible that Cursor or Windsurf can win the race,
| even if they need to replace every single one of the MS
| extensions and entirely diverge the core IDE from upstream.
| These products are well capitalized and it's just not _that_
| hard to build the core pieces of an IDE.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| >Ultimately, the future isn't about a smarter editor, it's
| about a smarter teammate. Tools like GitHub Copilot or future
| agents will handle entire engineering tickets: generating PRs
| with tests, taking feedback, and iterating like a real
| collaborator.
|
| I think a few options for this already exist, but honestly they
| don't go far enough. I want something like an AI scrum master,
| for hyper agile teams, that can task out smaller tickets to AI
| sub agents.
|
| I would integrate this thing in with something like an AI
| powered Jira.
|
| Two arguments exists.
|
| 1. I need to take about 6 months off and start building this
| now, even if I don't know exactly how I'll get it done. Between
| a combination of vibe coding and maybe a bit of outsourced work
| ( looking at Eastern Europe), I could get this done with my
| personal funds.
|
| 2. To do this properly would probably require tens of millions
| of dollars. I'll probably burn myself out trying to do it solo
| without ultimately getting to a sellable product.
|
| The biggest issue here is to actually scale I would need to
| either have users bring their own LLM keys or have tens of
| thousands to spend on LLM tokens.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I was a little late to jump on the cursor bandwagon but finally
| downloaded it because i liked the LLM chat interface in the
| sidebar. By the time my free trial ran out, VSCode had added a
| LLM chat interface in the sidebar. Yes Cursor had a bit better
| auto complete and maybe a few other things but it wasnt good
| enough that it was worth paying for.
|
| But I'm glad OpenAI is getting into the tooling space in this
| way. I cant wait to use all the cool features they build after
| VSCode rips them off.
| cheema33 wrote:
| > By the time my free trial ran out, VSCode had added a LLM
| chat interface in the sidebar.
|
| I am guessing you are talking about GitHub Copilot when you
| say VSCode. GitHub Copilot is far far inferior product when
| compared to Cursor, Windsurf or Augment Code. Most people who
| try almost any Copilot alternative for a reasonable amount of
| time end up canceling their Copilot subscription. I did,
| after two months of using both.
| RobinL wrote:
| How long ago was that? 6 months ago I switched from VS Code
| to Cursor, which at the time was FAR superior to Copilot.
| Around a month ago I switched back to VS Code, and found
| there's not much difference any more. Autocomplete in VS
| Code is still less good, but the agent mode in VS Code
| feels pretty similar to Cursor's (albeit a little slower,
| perhaps).
|
| To be honest I think both are quite limited by context
| length (in that they try to limit the context they send to
| the LLM and hence cost), and so I find myself using Gemini
| 2.5 in AI studio with the 1m context length, and asking it
| to generate instructions for Copilot (which seems to work
| pretty well)
| FuckButtons wrote:
| I think you're being overoptimistic about the skill ceiling
| that this generation of Ai is likely to have.
| DanHulton wrote:
| Yeah. Every time I see entirely unfounded claims like that, I
| remember that I've been seeing them for literal years now.
| While there have definitely been improvements in AI
| capability, they have largely been very marginal, while the
| claimed "will handle entire engineering tickets" capability
| requires huge leaps in capability and reliability that _we
| just have not seen evidence for._
|
| Mentally, I'm replacing claims like this with "it will do
| magic!" and I think I'm just about as likely to be correct.
| joshwcomeau wrote:
| ++. Was surprised I had to scroll so far to find someone
| saying this!
| 3abiton wrote:
| This is the right take, but long term. Short term, it's just
| about investor hype. Cursor is becoming more mainstream and if
| OpenAI falls behind on this, they'll be losing momentum. But
| yes, the fields moves so fast, it'll be totally different in a
| year or 2. Does anyone recall langchain?
| re5i5tor wrote:
| I have to admit skepticism re: "far greater stability and
| polish" from MS
| cft wrote:
| I am slightly more optimistic, because the API may not be fully
| centralized- there may be more than one foundational AI company
| in the end. Like WhatsApp exists because there's the
| iOS/Android duopoly, an agent-neutral IDE from a non-
| foundational company without its own API aspirations may
| continue to exist
| gexos wrote:
| You're not wrong that Windsurf and Cursor feel transitional--
| they're clearly riding the AI wave without quite nailing the
| execution yet. But calling them "stopgaps" might undersell
| their role. They're experiments in what developer tools can
| become, and even if they stumble, they're shaping the direction
| the industry is heading.
|
| As for Microsoft tightening its grip on VSCode, yeah, that's a
| strategic play. It's the classic embrace-extend-extinguish arc
| we've seen before. But the community won't just roll over. If
| they start walling off features like TypeScript 7.0 from forks,
| the open source pushback will be fierce--and that could
| backfire hard.
|
| The bugs and instability in Cursor and Windsurf are real,
| especially in the AI layers--but that's what happens when you
| ship fast. Microsoft might catch up and polish those ideas,
| sure. But raw innovation rarely comes from the behemoths--it
| bubbles up from the scrappy contenders.
|
| And you're absolutely right about the endgame: the shift from
| "smart tools" to "smart collaborators." But we need both.
| Editors like Cursor are the testing ground for those future
| teammates. They're rough drafts of a new paradigm, not just
| forks of VSCode with AI duct-taped on.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > If they start walling off features like TypeScript 7.0 from
| forks, the open source pushback will be fierce--and that
| could backfire hard.
|
| Do they have the man power to compete with _Microsoft_?
|
| Linux managed to do it but Linux is the biggest, most
| successful free software project there is. Firefox and its
| forks are a better example. If Mozilla stopped working on
| Firefox, the forks would be pretty much dead in the water:
| they simply do not have the man power necessary to maintain a
| modern browser.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Does microsoft have the wisdom to predict where this line
| of technology is headed, and/or the agility to course
| correct when their predictions don't quite hit the mark?
|
| Cursor blows copilot out of the water in my experience. Man
| power clearly isn't the most decisive factor in this
| battle.
| maccard wrote:
| > Ultimately, the future isn't about a smarter editor, it's
| about a smarter teammate. Tools like GitHub Copilot or future
| agents will handle entire engineering tickets: generating PRs
| with tests, taking feedback, and iterating like a real
| collaborator.
|
| I disagree, but would love to be wrong. These tools exploded
| onto the scene and were massive productivity helpers, but since
| their initial integrations they've churned rather than improved
| in the last 2 years. They are even worse when you try to
| iterate rather than just get them to one shot the problem
| space.
| prpl wrote:
| I view this as an another step in the push/pull between local
| things, remote things, local things remotely, thin clients,
| network partitioning, cloud, zero trust, etc...
|
| The last cycle I remember of this IMO is iPython ->
| Jupyterhub/Jupyterlab. Of course, iPython has existed for a
| long time, though that change was made because data was too big
| to analyze locally and it turns out it was more convenient to
| centrally manage kernels/images/libraries for convenience.
|
| MCP servers and Cursor/Windsurf changed that a bit, but it will
| end up centralized again at some point (or at least aggregated,
| if it's not already?). People are passing around lists of
| interesting MCP servers now, and that will be out of fashion in
| less than 12 months.
| hnlurker22 wrote:
| I just abandoned Windsurf because I found copy/pasting code
| with ChatGPT's web interface significantly better in terms of
| results.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I'm still just copying and pasting. Was considering trying
| it. Is it really not any better?
| bko wrote:
| Incredible timeline to a $3B exit
|
| > Windsurf began in 2021 as Exafunction, founded by MIT graduates
| Varun Mohan and Douglas Chen. The company initially focused on
| GPU optimization before pivoting to AI-assisted coding tools,
| launching Codeium, which later evolved into Windsurf.
|
| > Series B (January 2024): $65 million at a $500 million
| valuation.
|
| > Series C (September 2024): $150 million, led by General
| Catalyst, at a $1.3 billion valuation.
|
| > May 2025: $3 billion acquisition from OpenAI
|
| I wonder how much of the value is really from the model or the
| tooling around it. They all use the same models (mostly Claude,
| others have been horrible and buggy in my experience). Even co-
| pilot agent mode now uses Claude. The editor has their own LLM
| (?) that does the apply since LLMs often return snippets. They
| work well enough on Cursor. And then you have the auto-complete,
| which I think is their own model as well.
|
| But the main value from me is from the agent mode and 95% of the
| value is the underlying model. The other stuff could be more or
| less a VS Code plugin. The other benefit is the fixed pricing. I
| have no idea how much 500 calls cost if I were to use the API,
| but I expect they're probably losing money.
| bfeynman wrote:
| talented and smart folks for sure but can't not notice how much
| luck it is especially because its like 100% just better models.
| Windsurf raised a ton of money and then said they pivoted which
| they had millions raised to just do something completely
| different that likely wouldn't have been easier to raise for.
| Even in an interview with the cursor founder he kind of dumbly
| rambles that they launched and then basically lost a ton of
| traction until GPT4 came out. They have some core features like
| autocomplete but I'm struggling to see vision other than
| getting training data for iterative dev is a partial moat
| compared to just seeing commits and final code bases.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| > I wonder how much of the value is really from the model
|
| > The other stuff could be more or less a VS Code plugin
|
| The other stuff would take a team 6 months to implement. This
| is where the valuation comes from. Time to market, they are
| there TODAY.
| supportengineer wrote:
| 6 months of anyone's time is not worth 3 billion dollars.
| moralestapia wrote:
| The right time and the right place, plus they did the work,
| ofc; but I'm sure 80% of this site has worked as hard as, or
| even more, than what it takes to clone VSCode.
|
| I'm jelly. Very rarely you see in history someone lucky enough
| to be riding the absolute top of the wave. Even OpenAI took
| about decade to cook their breakthrough product.
| rpgbr wrote:
| It's a bubble about to pop. That's where the value is coming
| from.
| seydor wrote:
| This may end up saving openAI. their models have no moat
| blitzar wrote:
| The companies they are buying have even less moat than openAi
| whazor wrote:
| From a customer point of view it makes sense to pay a fixed
| monthly price for both chat and coding, instead of having two
| separate subscriptions.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Question: has there been any announcements of bundling Windsurf
| with the ChatGPT $20/month package? (I could not access the
| linked article)
| mrweasel wrote:
| That makes a lot of sense, for the customers, but OpenAI is not
| profitable on even their $200 subscription. I doubt Windsurf is
| turning a profit either.
|
| Buying a "bundle" should result in a lower price, as compared
| to buying both tools separately, making the loses worse. Unless
| they can reuse some of the same infrastructure and save a lot
| of money that way.
| rvz wrote:
| Very surprising outcome, since OpenAI went after Cursor (twice)
| [0] And I originally thought that Cursor would be bought instead
| a day before the rumour [1].
|
| It was smart for Windsurf to take the offer and to get greedy in
| this hype cycle. Unless Cursor is thinking that Anthropic or
| someone else will buy them for a lot more, its going to get
| extremely competitive as the switching cost for Cursor is zero
| and that ARR can disappear very quickly.
|
| Copilot will attempt to destroy Cursor on price and functionality
| for however long they want to.
|
| Very risky for Cursor at $9B valuation (which I think is
| overvalued and based on VC FOMO).
|
| [0] https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/17/openai-pursued-cursor-
| make...
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43698819
| returnInfinity wrote:
| sometimes products stick, like slack, dropbox, box cursor may
| survive
| rvz wrote:
| *not get greedy.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/l6n9H
| brap wrote:
| Recent announcements from OpenAI seem to indicate they know
| they're losing the race
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| You are referring to the nonprofit continuation?
|
| They have certainly lost the monopoly.
| lolinder wrote:
| The next step for Cursor and Windsurf both is that they need to
| work together to provide an answer for what it means to be a VS
| Code fork in the new era where Microsoft is trying to strangle
| the forks. If they're not already they should be teaming up with
| each other and with the VSCodium team and with the Open VSX
| marketplace.
|
| Microsoft is an existential threat to their model here, but with
| the money they each have coming in they together have the
| opportunity to make the whole ecosystem better by building out
| viable infrastructure for all VS Code forks, if they can
| cooperate.
| xnx wrote:
| "$3B" should be in heavy quotes if this is paid in OpenAI shares.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| probably paid in pro accounts
| tom_y wrote:
| Fortunately it is not the cursor. I am using the cursor and I
| don't want it to be sold.
| Oras wrote:
| Good for them, always rooting for startups who win.
|
| That said, I have tried Windsurf multiple times, and it wasn't a
| pleasant experience compared to Cursor, which I've been using for
| more than 6 months as a paid customer.
| incorrecthorse wrote:
| It blows my mind OpenAI wouldn't be able to build a Windsurf
| alternative for orders of magnitude less than $3B.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Why didn't they just use ChatGPT to build it? Weird.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| it would be only a few millions if they used cursor and
| Claude but their ego prevented it
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| Sometimes it almost seems like the idea that LLMs are capable
| of instantly creating real, maintainable software is vastly
| overblown to inflate valuations...
| lispisok wrote:
| Somebody didnt read their daily PR article about how CEOs
| are replacing entire teams with a few "rockstars vibe
| coding with AI"
| michelb wrote:
| They can, of course, but why would they waste time on it? They
| are buying a tool, talent, and a heap of paying enterprise
| customers. This is a steal.
| echelon wrote:
| And they're probably buying it with equity, not cash.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| According to the various CEO's saying AI give 100x speedup
| they could just have one dev whip it up in a weekend no?
| xyst wrote:
| An _ide_ sold for $3B? VCs and other early investors got their
| 1000% ROI on this one.
| ujkhsjkdhf234 wrote:
| I need someone to convince me this isn't one of the biggest waste
| of money on an acquisition. If OpenAI can't build an official IDE
| for less than 3 Billion then what are they even doing? Windsurf
| can't have that high of a userbase that you feel the need to pay
| for it.
| ashish01 wrote:
| > one of the biggest waste of money on an acquisition.
|
| I think that was when intel acquired McAfee for 8B in 2010.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| MSFT buying Nokia for $7B is runner up. But at least it could
| have worked if MSFT hadn't burned it down. Intel and McAfee
| makes no sense at all.
| fazeirony wrote:
| you mean the company that spent $9B to make $4B in 2024? that
| openai?
|
| i agree with you on this - it seems that openai hallucinates
| reality as much as their products do :-/
| singularity2001 wrote:
| instinctively I agree but it's all about timing: if they try to
| build their own IDE and hired people it would probably still
| take a couple of years to get a decent product. I don't know
| about patents.
| mdaniel wrote:
| > if they try to build their own IDE and hired people
|
| Oh, haven't you heard? Hiring _people_ to write software is
| so last decade. Maybe they just didn 't want to vibe code a
| Windsurf implementation and decided to buy a press cycle for
| $3B
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| We don't know how OpenAI is paying. A lot of comments seem to
| be assuming this is an all-cash deal. We have no evidence for
| that.
| rchaud wrote:
| These deals are mostly in stock, not cash. $3b cash is not
| something most companies can afford to part with, and
| additionally, making deals that are stock-heavy creates an
| incentive for the leadership of the acquired company to keep
| working towards the general interest of OAI, and not
| instantly retire.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _These deals are mostly in stock, not cash_
|
| How are you defining "these deals"? Most acquisitions of
| startup by larger companies in America over the last
| decade, at least, have been all cash.
| rchaud wrote:
| I'd define them as a large company acquiring a private
| startup. Slack >> Salesforce was a cash-and-stock deal.
| Postmaters >> Uber, all stock.
|
| In cases where the company being acquired is already
| publicly traded, those deals would have to be all cash as
| their shareholders would need to be bought out. IBM paid
| cash for Hashicorp, and Doordash will acquire Deliveroo
| in cash.
| xnx wrote:
| > If OpenAI can't build an official IDE for less than 3 Billion
|
| It's funny money / made-up value. This is not $3B cash.
| resters wrote:
| - A $3B signal that OpenAI is unable to do product
|
| - AI assisted coding is mostly about managing the context and
| knowing what to put in the context to avoid confusion and dumb
| mistakes, it's not about the UI.
|
| - This signals that OpenAI believes that highly effective coding
| assistant LLMs will become a commodity / open source and so UI /
| tooling lock-in is a good investment.
| herval wrote:
| chatgpt is massively popular, I'm not sure that's the signal
| I'd get
|
| they're acquiring one of the biggest the front doors to
| developers, with Windsurf - whether it'll _remain_ in fashion
| or not, that's a different debate. This can be like facebook
| acquiring instagram (if developers turn out to be the actual
| profit-driver niche for LLMs, which currently seems to be the
| case)
| resters wrote:
| > developers turn out to be the actual profit-driver niche
| for LLMs
|
| AI is definitely huge for anyone writing code, though one can
| imagine a model like o3 completely replacing 90% of white
| collar jobs that involve reading, writing and analysis.
|
| Interestingly, o3 is particularly bad at legalese, likely not
| fully by accident. Of all professions whose professional
| organizations and regulatory capture create huge rents, the
| legal profession is the most ripe for disruption.
|
| It's not uncommon for lawyers to bill $250 to $500 per hour
| for producing boilerplate language. Contracts reviewed or
| drawn up by lawyers never come with any guarantees either, so
| one does not learn until too late that the lawyer overlooked
| something important. Most lawyers have above average IQs and
| understand arcane things, but most of it is pretty basic at
| its core.
|
| Lawyers, Pharmacists, many doctors, nearly all accountants,
| and most middle managers will be replaceable by AI agents.
|
| Software engineers are still expected to produce novel
| outputs unlike those other fields, so there is still room for
| humans to pilot the machine for a while. And since most
| software is meant to be used by humans, soon software will
| need to be usable by AI agents, which will reduce a lot of UI
| to an MCP.
| noitpmeder wrote:
| Your take on lawyers is absolutely insane. If you don't
| think the extremely specialized and well trained
| professionals can successfully navigate contracts then I
| can't wait for the absolute garbage the LLMs spit out when
| faced with similar challenges.
|
| Honestly, same for doctors and accountants. Unless these
| model providers are willing to provide "guarantees" that
| they will compensate for damages faced as a result of their
| output.
|
| Doctors and Lawyers are required in many areas to carry
| malpractice insurance. Good luck getting "hot new AI legal
| startup" to sign off on that.
| resters wrote:
| While malpractice insurance exists for human docs and
| lawyers, there is not really any difference between an
| ai-powered lawyer drawing up a contract, an ai-powered
| doc reviewing a chart and recommending next steps, and a
| self-driving car making a turn.
|
| The most obviously "lethal" case (cars) is already in
| large scale rollout worldwide.
|
| At scale, self-driving car "errors" will fall under
| general liability insurance coverage, most likely. Firms
| will probably carry some insurance as well just in case.
|
| LLMs already write better prose than 95% of humans and
| models like o3 reason better than 90% of humans on many
| tasks.
|
| In both law and medicine there are many pre-existing
| safeguards that have been created to reduce error rates
| for human practitioners (checklists, text search tools
| (lexis nexis, uptodate, etc.), continuing education,
| etc.) which can be applied to AI professionals too.
| herval wrote:
| > one can imagine a model like o3 completely replacing 90%
| of white collar jobs that involve reading, writing and
| analysis
|
| Wake me up when there's any evidence of this whatsoever.
| Pure fantasy.
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| What's the equivalent in the Vim world?
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| https://windsurf.com/vim_tutorial?extensionName=vim
| owendarko wrote:
| We're reaching a point where we don't need to switch to another
| IDE (from VS Code/IntelliJ/insert-your-IDE-here) for "AI/vibe
| coding"
|
| IDEs can support "AI coding agents" on their own.
|
| The entire workflow for "AI coding agents" boils down to:
|
| 1. You write a prompt
|
| 2. The "agent" wraps it in a system prompt and sends it to the
| LLM
|
| 3. The LLM sends back a response
|
| 4. The agent performs specific actions based on that response
| (editing files, creating new ones, etc.)
|
| Microsoft already started doing that with Copilot. And they have
| a vibrant ecosystem of VS Code extensions (I maintain one of them
| [1])
|
| "AI agents" should be a feature, not a separate piece of software
| (IDE) that's integral to software devs.
|
| [1] https://github.com/Kilo-Org/kilocode
| remoroid wrote:
| Windsurf is terrible, I always use AI just in a normal website
| and I tried this product a few days ago and it asks me if it can
| run a command to make a file, which I find extremely strange,
| then it fails to write valid commands even to do mkdir.
| visarga wrote:
| It worked allright for me when I was using it, a month ago. I
| cancelled because they somhow lost my paid credits and refused
| to refund me. No matter how great an AI tool, if the company is
| mismanaging user payments or usage tracking, it is useless.
| andai wrote:
| That was my experience with OpenAI's Codex auto-coder thing
| (running o4-mini). It took 5 minutes and like 200 commands to
| do what Gemini 2.5 Flash (not even Pro!) did in about 30
| seconds.
|
| I see LLMs trying to do stuff that doesn't work in every AI
| coding thing I've tried, despite 20 pages of system prompts!
| (Or perhaps because of it.)
| robertclaus wrote:
| A lot of this valuation must be aqui-hire and existing users,
| right? 6 months of development lead time can't be worth this
| much... can it?
| istjohn wrote:
| I wonder how much of this is a data play for OpenAI as they work
| to improve language model performance on longer time horizons.
| fcanesin wrote:
| OpenAI knows that everyday someone uses Gemini their ChatGPT
| brand dies a bit faster. Wonder what Google has in storage for
| I/O now in May, would be a death sentence to just steamroll with
| Gemini-3.
| ukuina wrote:
| So soon after Gemini 2.5?
| xnx wrote:
| > Wonder what Google has in storage for I/O now in May
|
| "Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview (I/O edition)"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43906018
| fcanesin wrote:
| LMAO, like one hour after. And guess what, it is a coding
| upgrade .
| qoez wrote:
| Google IO in may? Guess we'll be getting a huge OpenAI release
| May 19th then.
|
| Edit: Oh of course, it's the open weights model they've been
| teasing.
| andai wrote:
| They launched a new version of Gemini 2.5 Pro today.
|
| https://developers.googleblog.com/en/gemini-2-5-pro-io-impro...
| casey2 wrote:
| Open AI needed to spend $3B pivoting away from bigdata based
| AI. But instead they went for the most shorted sighted move
| possible of snapping up the "trendiest" company nobody has ever
| heard outside the Ycombinator echo chamber.
|
| Typical VI-fallacy BS. If LLMs were actually good they would
| replace IDEs completely not be integrated.
| ashvardanian wrote:
| If I recall correctly from the recent YC interview, the Windsurf
| founder noted their team leans more toward GTM than engineering.
| That makes this less likely to be a classic acquihire (as with
| Rockset) and more plausibly a data play rather than a product
| integration.
|
| My current read is that this is a frontier lab acquiring large-
| scale training data--cheaply--from a community of "vibe coders",
| instead of paying professional annotators. In that light, it
| feels more like a "you are the product" scenario, which likely
| won't sit well with Windsurf's paying customers.
|
| Interesting times.
| simple10 wrote:
| Agreed. It seems like a data play and a hedge to beef up vibe
| code competition against upcoming Google and MS models so
| OpenAI doesn't lose API revenue. I would assume vibe coding
| consumes more tokens than most other text based API usage.
| bradley13 wrote:
| M&A activity needs much more strongly regulated. Buying up
| potential competitors is how we get monstrosities like Microsoft
| and Alphabet.
| chipgap98 wrote:
| In what world is Windsurf an OpenAI competitor?
| throwaway7783 wrote:
| This is probably a response to Claude Code, which is still
| experimental and terminal-only.
|
| In my experience Claude Code is fantastic, both for answering
| questions about the codebase and coding.
| ccheney wrote:
| OpenAI has Codex CLI https://github.com/openai/codex
| knes wrote:
| does that mean that Windsurf will only support OpenAI models
| going forward? I doubt OpenAI will pay to have users use
| Gemini/Claude? Especially as all of these Ai coding tools
| (Windsurf, Augment, Cursor) are heavily subsidizing the users.
|
| I wonder what Anthropic makes of this. Windsurf was like a top 3
| customers of them, might be a big revenue blow too?
| ukuina wrote:
| Maybe Anthropic will buy Cursor to level the field.
| _pdp_ wrote:
| I cannot pretend that I know what is going on - I don't.
|
| I think the long-term play here is something to do with Agents
| and they are simply cornering the market because coding tools are
| part to it.
|
| That being said, quick search around what people are building
| with these VIDEs reveals mostly landing pages that are actually
| not even that good. For the amount of money spent one could have
| easily bought a good template or pay someone to customise an
| existing one.
|
| I don't know. Maybe I am dumb.
| redbell wrote:
| Ok, now I have a question: Will OpenAI keep Windsurf open to
| third-party models, or will they limit it to their own models
| only?
| sidgarimella wrote:
| probably a rare area I fully agree with HN on- the IP here seems
| weak and it's not hard to swap out code editors, nothing like
| tearing out Salesforce or other sales-driven tooling. and idk if
| first mover advantage actually means much in the next 10 years
| given how dynamic the underlying models are.
|
| but undeniably these cos are all a great lesson in just how much
| cash lies in executing first/near first
| dbreunig wrote:
| What is Windsurf's (or for that matter: Cursor, Cline, or
| CoPilot) moat? This seems like a great deal and timing for them.
| D4ckard wrote:
| I don't get why people want the AI right in their editor. In
| another windows inside the editor, fine, but not inline with code
| I'm writing. It's super distracting to have AI auto complete pop
| up at random all the time. As always, typing speed, or speed at
| generating raw code, is not the bottleneck in programming. The
| crux remains design, in which case having the LLM on the side is
| just fine (if you use it for that).
|
| There are some niceties about inline completion (like spelling
| out a log message that's obvious from the surrounding code) but I
| don't get the hype much beyond that.
|
| Maybe I'm missing some feature though ...
| echelon wrote:
| Have you tried it recently?
|
| AI autocomplete is the best thing I've experienced in developer
| experience in my career since git won over subversion.
|
| I don't use LLM code prompting, but autocomplete is my jam.
| It's getting things right 90% of the time when I'm plumbing
| fields or refactoring. It makes life so much more pleasurable,
| and I say that as someone who is already using a statically
| typed language with robust IDE refactoring capabilities.
|
| It's absolutely made me more productive.
| pknerd wrote:
| I am happy with Copilot with VSCode..I do not think so, I
| would need to let AI generate the entire code. Even if I
| need, I copy/paste from Claude/GPT
| tomjen3 wrote:
| If you have tried the completions in copilot, you are right.
| They are complete garbage.
|
| Windsurfs on the other hand are much better. The only issue is
| that windsurf is super aggressive about them, but it is able to
| do do things like "the user made a change on this line, he most
| likely also want to make the change here".
| sensanaty wrote:
| You'd think with all these super hyper advanced AI tools they're
| shitting out they would be able to make a mediocre VSCode
| extension of their own instead of flushing 3B down the drain.
| Guess that's slightly out of reach of their "AGI"s though.
| crsv wrote:
| Man why did these guys do that OpenAI couldn't replicate for less
| than 3Bn on reasonable timeline? This seems insane.
| lnenad wrote:
| They've got users (which I don't doubt that OpenAI's fork of
| VSC would have as well but I assume that's their thought
| process)
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yup. Even a small market share is market share. Plus they are
| paying to acquire a team of folks who are already in this
| space and who will, until golden handcuffs come off, keep
| working in this space. Still an insane number though.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| But openai is stronger brand with free publicity - whatever
| they say/do will instantly show up the same day on all news
| across the world.
|
| The "space" exists for months, there are no people with 10y
| expertise here, with their brand they can attract any
| talent they can wish for in this "space", no?
|
| You can probably vibe code 80% of it in a week or two?
| arthur-st wrote:
| They have an old-school enterprise sales operation that is
| doing superb work. Apart from that, ChatGPT's projects are
| useless crap (can't read other convos in a project; can't
| generate project documents from a convo), and so clearly they
| would get value out of just getting some developers who have
| built anything of use to a poweruser.
| pknerd wrote:
| hmm..
|
| Tell me what AI wrapper do I make that you would acquire my
| product?
| soorya3 wrote:
| IMO, there are few solid reasons to purchasing this tool 1.
| windsurf has lot of insights into how developer writes code,
| style, problem etc 2. for the prompt engineering that went into
| generating the code 3. only microsoft and cursor has the moat so
| they need to compete at the applications level not model level.
|
| My prediction is anthropic, google or amazon will buy cursor. The
| next logical step to coding is building apps.
| retornam wrote:
| I'm skeptical about this VSCode fork commanding a $3 billion
| valuation when it depends on API services it doesn't own. What's
| their moat here?
|
| For comparison, JetBrains generates over $400 million in annual
| revenue and is valued around $7 billion. They've built
| proprietary technology and deep expertise in that market over
| decades.
|
| If AI (terminology aside) replaces many professional software
| engineers and programmers like some of its fierce advocates say
| it would, wouldn't their potential customer base shrink?
|
| Professionals typically drive enterprise revenue, while hobbyists
| --who might become the primary users--generally don't support the
| same business model or spending levels.
|
| What am I missing here?
| lolinder wrote:
| Part of what you're missing is that OpenAI needs to justify its
| own overinflated valuation. They raise money on the premise
| that an AI-native company can and will outcompete giant
| established players, so lowballing Windsurf would run counter
| to the narrative they're selling to their own investors.
| mdasen wrote:
| The article also doesn't say that it's $3B in cash that
| OpenAI is spending. They might be giving Windsurf $3B worth
| of OpenAI shares - paying an inflated value for Windsurf with
| their own inflated value.
|
| OpenAI just had a fundraising round that put them at $300B.
| Maybe they're just giving Windsurf 1% of OpenAI. Maybe
| they're even giving less than 1% - if OpenAI was worth $300B
| at the end of March and $150B last October, maybe they're
| worth $400B now. Maybe Windsurf is getting 0.75% of OpenAI
| that's "valued" at $3B.
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| If OpenAI just provides AI, then the various IDEs development
| wrappers / IDEs / low-code etc. can collectively bargain
| against OpenAI for low rates. If OpenAI has an alternative,
| then they can charge higher rates for all plugins/ etc. and
| give the market an alternative.
| retornam wrote:
| If enterprises require fewer software engineers, where will
| the market for IDE development wrappers come from?
| owebmaster wrote:
| if enterprises require fewer software engineers,
| medium/small companies will have access to a higher quality
| software engineering.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| One example is that VS Code Copilot autocomplete is still
| behind what Codeium (now Windsurf) was 1.5 years ago.
| supportengineer wrote:
| High valuations for companies you've never heard of with no
| moat - it comes down to cronyism/nepotism/fraud.
| arthur-st wrote:
| They have a healthy enterprise customer base, and an
| engineering team that clearly knows how to work with power
| users (which OpenAI is bad at).
| blueboo wrote:
| OpenAI needs a product team
|
| hiring is hard
|
| it's a high-functioning team swimming in contemporary design
| and eng practices
|
| code is emerging as an important battleground
|
| OpenAI has the $$$
| owebmaster wrote:
| It is ironic that the company said to be cooking AGI is
| acquihiring software engineers because they can't develop it
| in-house.
| samdjstephens wrote:
| Just consider what it fundamentally is: a company at the
| leading edge of a product category that has found absurdly
| strong technology/use-case fit, and is growing insanely fast.
|
| Looking for a moat in the technology is always a bit of a trap
| - it's in the traction, the brand awareness, the user data etc.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Looking for a moat in the technology is always a bit of a
| trap - it's in the traction, the brand awareness, the user
| data etc.
|
| Traction, brand awareness, and user data do not favor
| Windsurf over GitHub Copilot. The few of us who follow all
| the new developments are aware that Windsurf has been roughly
| leading the pack in terms of capabilities, but _do not_
| underestimate the power of being bundled into both VS Code
| and GitHub by default. Everyone else is an upstart by
| comparison and needs some form of edge to make up for it, and
| without a moat it will be very hard for them to maintain
| their edge long enough to beat GitHub 's dominance.
| samdjstephens wrote:
| Definitely take that point. But this valuation is perhaps
| more about how much that traction, brand and data is worth
| to OpenAI, who cannot buy Copilot. $3bn doesn't seem so
| disproportionate in that context especially given the
| amount of money being attracted to the space.
| Illniyar wrote:
| Cursor purports 200m in projected yearly revenue. With some
| months having 40% month over month growth. The trajectory is
| vastly different.
|
| Whether or not it's justified is a different matter, but for
| startups valuations are more about potential then current
| performance.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| I don't get it.
|
| With $3bn budget you can replicate it in few months, promote for
| free using your own stronger brand and you're left with roughly
| $3bn in the bank to do whatever you want.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| They seem almost exactly the same as Cursor, but even using the
| exact same rules, Cursor gives much better results than Windsurf
| (which performs below viable for me) - my test case was a complex
| Python project.
| dubeye wrote:
| the answer is always users and growth rate.
| swyx wrote:
| my summary here https://news.smol.ai/issues/25-05-05-cursor-
| openai-windsurf
| serverlessmania wrote:
| GitHub acquired for 7b, Windsurf a VScode fork + Agentic LLM...
| 3b$. I should be missing something.
| jsheard wrote:
| > Windsurf a VScode fork + Agentic LLM... 3b$.
|
| They don't have their own LLMs either, they've glued a 3rd
| party editor to 3rd party models. That's some expensive glue.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| They have their own autocomplete model.
| jsheard wrote:
| My bad, I was looking at the wrong thing. They use 3rd
| party models for chat but you're right, they rolled their
| own autocomplete model from scratch.
| casey2 wrote:
| Who are these people that give OpenAI all this money? Aren't
| Microsoft, SoftBank, Nvidia publicly traded? Don't they owe a
| fiduciary duty to their investors? I'm surprised it's legal to
| just hand over a blank check to random private companies to make
| nonsense purchases. This isn't going to end well.
|
| If I were any of these companies I would be suing OpenAI to try
| to get my money back. Thrive, ARK, Tiger and the others can pound
| sand
| ramoz wrote:
| Bearish on IDEs after using Claude Code.
| qainsights wrote:
| Valuation lost its meaning in recent years :)
| victorantos wrote:
| This is classic OpenAI - acquiring competitors rather than
| innovating internally. They're desperately trying to keep up with
| competition from Anthropic and Microsoft's GitHub, but throwing
| money at the problem is hardly a creative solution.
|
| What's especially rich is the timing - right after OpenAI
| backpedaled on their restructuring plans due to "public pushback"
| (read: Sam Altman making yet another governance blunder). Now
| they're dumping billions into a tool that's essentially the same
| thing everyone else is building.
| franze wrote:
| here is the thing, even those editors are relict of the pasts,
| the code is still in the center in these editors. thats something
| we need now, but not in the near (2 years, 5 years, 10 years?)
| future.
|
| then the prompt is the coding, the reasoning is the execution,
| the code just an abstract layer that we do not care to much about
| i.e.: like assembly, machine instructions.
|
| we know it exists, bit even here on hackernews i would guess only
| a small fraction know how it really works on a detailed level.
|
| there will still be coding, instructions (prompt) -> execution
| (reasoning and AI code and code execution -> feedback (debugging
| to AI then and one point to the user)
|
| bur actual looking at the code, well, thats only when this cycle
| annoyingly fails.
|
| so current IDEs are still built from an code first mindset. this
| will not be the IDE of the future.
|
| so basically OpenAI bought a Dinosaur
| yapyap wrote:
| damn.
|
| openai just seems to have a hole in their hand they keep
| temporarily patching up with new investor money
| libraryofbabel wrote:
| But is there a secret sauce in any of the coding agents (Copilot
| Agent, Windsurf, Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Aider, etc)? Sure,
| some have better user experience than others, but what if
| anything makes one "better at coding" than another?
|
| As this great blog post lays bare ("The Emperor Has No Clothes",
| https://ampcode.com/how-to-build-an-agent), the _core_ tech of a
| coding agent isn 't anything magic - it's a set of LLM prompts
| plus a main loop running the calls to the LLM and executing the
| tool calls that the LLM wants to do. The tools are pretty
| standard like, search, read file, edit file, execute a bash
| command, etc. etc. Really all the power and complexity and
| "coding ability is in the LLM itself. Sure, it's a lot of work to
| make something polished that devs want to use - but is there any
| more to it than that?
|
| So what is the differentiator here, other than user experience
| (for which I prefer the CLI tools, but to each their own)? $3B is
| a lot for something that sure doesn't seem to have any secret
| sauce tech or moat that I can see.
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