OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B • Hacker News Board

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#191

Post by noitpmeder » Tue, May 06, 2025, 6:26 PM UTC

resters wrote: post #175

herval wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

> 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, t…

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.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#192

Post by rchaud » Tue, May 06, 2025, 6:27 PM UTC

dist-epoch wrote: post #65

Androider wrote: post #28

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,…

Cursor ($9 bil) has a higher valuation than JetBrains ($7 bil). Think about that.

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.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#193

Post by returnInfinity » Tue, May 06, 2025, 6:27 PM UTC

rvz wrote: post #35

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…

sometimes products stick, like slack, dropbox, box cursor may survive

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#194

Post by rafram » Tue, May 06, 2025, 6:28 PM UTC

slt2021 wrote: post #180

timabdulla wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

why OpenAI purchased windsurf instead of prompting openai to create something like windsurf? this is the question i am still asking...

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

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#195

Post by dbreunig » Tue, May 06, 2025, 6:28 PM UTC

What is Windsurf's (or for that matter: Cursor, Cline, or CoPilot) moat? This seems like a great deal and timing for them.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#196

Post by lispisok » Tue, May 06, 2025, 6:29 PM UTC

chipgap98 wrote: post #139

bix6 wrote: post #25

~$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...

Growth rate matters a lot though. If they are growing quickly that multiple reduces quickly

Easy to grow when you're selling one dollar bills for 75 cents

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#197

Post by ccheney » Tue, May 06, 2025, 6:35 PM UTC

throwaway7783 wrote: post #146

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.

OpenAI has Codex CLI https://github.com/openai/codex

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#198

Post by madeofpalk » Tue, May 06, 2025, 6:38 PM UTC

doix wrote: post #54

Androider wrote: post #28

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,…

> 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…

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...

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#199

Post by whynotmaybe » Tue, May 06, 2025, 6:39 PM UTC

elevatortrim wrote: post #185

dontlikeyoueith wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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).

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...

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#200

Post by rchaud » Tue, May 06, 2025, 6:40 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #130

ujkhsjkdhf234 wrote: post #87

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.

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.

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.