~$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
OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B
201–210 of 604 posts
Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B
#202Earlier 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...
Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B
#203Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
How are you differentiating from the cline/roo's of the world?
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…
Not sure how they'd do it considering you bring your own API keys. Can you link me to a resource?
Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B
#205Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B
#206Incredible 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…
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.
Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B
#207It blows my mind OpenAI wouldn't be able to build a Windsurf alternative for orders of magnitude less than $3B.
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.
Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
keep in mind a lot of $3B is ClosedAI paper money, so 75x ain't that ridiculous.
Do you know the cash / equity split?
So, I'd be inclined to believe the vast majority of the deal is stock (or whatever that is called pre-IPO).
Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
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.
Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B
#210$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)..
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.
I think it's going to be fine.
This is xAI buying Twitter, with extra steps.