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Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

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Re: Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

#101

Post by 34679 »

zwarag wrote: post #98
34679 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Void is basically the same thing, but open source and better. It's easy to use with any provider API key, even LM Studio for local models. You can use it with free models available from OpenRouter to try it out, but the quality of output is just as dependent on the model as any other solution. https://voideditor.com/ https://github.com/voideditor/void

People like Windsurf and Cursor because they offer them a flatrate.

Yeah, for sure. That's why I tried Cursor for a month. But as soon as I ran out of fast requests it became unusable. It had me waiting several minutes for the first token. I didn't realize how bad the experience was, fast requests included, until I used Void. It makes Cursor fast requests seem slow, and I tend to need fewer of them. The differences being that Void requests go straight to the provider instead of their own server first, and their system prompts seem to keep the models more on task.

Re: Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

#102

Post by smileeeee »

zmgsabst wrote: post #86
freehorse wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more like about cutting you off reselling their bread, which would be reasonable.

Is it? Grocery and department stores routinely have brands that compete with those they resell — but they’re not cut off for that. Eg, Kroger operates its own bakery and resells bread. What makes technology unlike those?

Stores regularly sell boxes of things labelled "not for individual resale". Here, windsurf would be the shopkeeper selling individual chewing gum strips out of the big package of 10x 5 strips.

Re: Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

#103

Post by lmeyerov »

jsnell wrote: post #95
lmeyerov wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is the disconnect for the token side: you seem to think they can't keep improving the margin to reach profitability. They are static and it will just get worse, not better. I think deepseek instead just showed they haven't really bothered yet. They rather focus on growing, and capital is cheap enough for these firms that optimizing margins is relatively distracting. Obviously they do optimize, but probably…

No, it feels more like the disconnect is that I think they're all compute-limited and you maybe don't? Almost every flop they use to serve a query at a loss is a flop they didn't use for training, research, or for queries that would have given them data to enable better training. Like, yes, if somebody has 100k H100s and are only able to find a use for 10k of them, they'd better find some scale fast; and if that scal…

I agree they are compute limited and disagree that they are aggressively optimizing. Many small teams are consistently showing many optimization gain opportunities all the way from app to software to hardware, and deepseek was basically just one especially notable example of many. In my experience, there are levels of effort to get corresponding levels of performance, and with complexity slowdowns on everyone else, so companies are typically slow-but-steady here, esp when ZIRP rewards that (which is still effectively in place for OpenAI). Afaict OpenAI hasn't been pounding on doors for performance people, and generally not signalling they go hard here vs growth.

Re: Stickiness => distribution leadership => monetization, I think they were like 80/20 on UI vs API revenue, but as a leader, their API revenue is still huge and still growing, esp as enterprise advance from POCs. They screwed up the API market for coding and some others (voice, video?), so afaict are more like "one of several market share leaders" vs "leading" . So the question becomes: Why are they able to maintain high numbers here, eg, is momentum enough so they can stay tied in second, and if they keep lowering costs, stay there, and enough so it can stay relevant for more vertical flows like coding? Does bundling UI in enterprise mean they stay a preferred enterprise partner? Etc . Oddly, I think they are at higher risk of losing the UI market more so than the API market bc an organizational DNA change is likely needed for how it is turning into a wide GSuite / Office scenario vs simple chat (see: Perplexity, Cursor, ...). They have the position, but it seems more straightforward for them to keep it in API vs UI.

Re: Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

#104

Post by demosthanos »

34679 wrote: post #101
zwarag wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like Windsurf and Cursor because they offer them a flatrate.

Yeah, for sure. That's why I tried Cursor for a month. But as soon as I ran out of fast requests it became unusable. It had me waiting several minutes for the first token. I didn't realize how bad the experience was, fast requests included, until I used Void. It makes Cursor fast requests seem slow, and I tend to need fewer of them. The differences being that Void requests go straight to the provider instead of their…

How much do you spend per month on Void, though? Your testimonial is great but incomplete without that information.

Re: Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

#105

Post by TiredOfLife »

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #35
wincy wrote: post #34

Wow excited for when Anthropic buys Cursor in a couple months and I get locked out of using OpenAI models with it. This is depressing. I just want stuff to work.

This is why I use Aider. Open source or GTFO

And then Anthropic cuts api access to Aider

Re: Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

#106

Post by TiredOfLife »

ramesh31 wrote: post #40
HyprMusic wrote: post #37

This feels like a cheap trick to drive users towards Claude Code. It's likely no coincidence that this happened at the same time they announced subscription access to Claude Code. The Windsurf team repeatedly stated that they're running at a loss so all this seems to have achieved is giving OpenAI an excuse to cut their 3rd party costs and drive more Windsurf users towards their own models.

Nobody is actually using Windsurf. It was an acquihire and a squashing of competition that caught ground in the enterprise contract market really early. Anyone doing agentic coding seriously is using open source tooling with direct token pricing to the major model providers. Windsurf/Cursor/et. al are just expensive middlemen with no added value.

If nobody is using then why cut off access?

Re: Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

#107

Post by solarkraft »

lmeyerov wrote: post #85
jsnell wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> High volume providers get efficiencies that low volume do not But paid-per-token APIs at negative margins do not provide scaling efficiencies! It's just the provider giving away a scarce resource (compute) for nothing tangible in exchange. Whatever you're able to do with that extra scale, you would have been able to do even better if you hadn't served this traffic. In contrast, the other things you can use the comp…

I think you ignored both of my points - 1. You just negated a technical statement with... I don't even know what. Engineering opportunities at volume and high skill allow changing the margin in ways low volume and low capitalization provider cannot. Talk to any GPU ML or DC eng and they will rattle off ways here. You can claim these opportunities aren't enough, but you don't seem to be willing to do so. 2. Again, eve…

> Engineering opportunities at volume and high skill allow changing the margin in ways low volume and low capitalization provider cannot

Everything depends on this actually being possible and I haven’t seen a lot of information on that so far.

DeepSeek‘s publication suggests that it is possible - specifically there was recently a discussion on batching. Google might have some secret sauce with their TPUs (is that why Gemini is so fast?)

And there are still Cerebras and Groq (why haven’t they taken over the world yet?), but their improvements don’t appear to be scale dependent.

Speculating that inference will get cheaper in the future might justify selling at a loss now to at least gain mind share, I guess.

Re: Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

#108

Post by BoorishBears »

consumer451 wrote: post #94
BoorishBears wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't make sense and the co-founder is being an intentionally crappy communicator. He's trying to paint it as removing access to something everyone gets by default, but in reality it's removing special treatment that they were previously giving Windsurf. The default Anthropic rate limit tiers don't support something Windsurf sized, and right now getting increased rate limits outside of their predefined tiers is…

> Earlier this week, Windsurf said that Anthropic cut its direct access to Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3.7 Sonnet, two of the more popular AI models for coding, forcing the startup to find third-party computing providers on relatively short notice. Windsurf said it was disappointed in Anthropic’s decision and that it might cause short-term instability for users trying to access Claude via Windsurf. As a Windsurf use…

They could have moved to Bedrock or Vertex, which both resell Claude access and have autonomy in who they allocate higher rate limits to.

But they're also crunched on Claude 4 capacity, if not more so than Anthropic's first-party access

Re: Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

#109

Post by lightbulbish »

34679 wrote: post #79
wincy wrote: post #34

Wow excited for when Anthropic buys Cursor in a couple months and I get locked out of using OpenAI models with it. This is depressing. I just want stuff to work.

Void is basically the same thing, but open source and better. It's easy to use with any provider API key, even LM Studio for local models. You can use it with free models available from OpenRouter to try it out, but the quality of output is just as dependent on the model as any other solution. https://voideditor.com/ https://github.com/voideditor/void

Have you used it? Haven't heard about it but tbh I can see how it would eventually outperform cursor and/or windsurf. As LLMS get better, and more background tasks etc, will come, I don't see a sustainably moat around IDEs generally (except switching cost, but if it is mostly vs code... )

saw you did below. What is your experience so far? fast requests are great. Anything big lacking?

I was using roo code for a bit and it was cool to see how fast it was going compared to windsurf.

Re: Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

#110

Post by lmeyerov »

solarkraft wrote: post #107
lmeyerov wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you ignored both of my points - 1. You just negated a technical statement with... I don't even know what. Engineering opportunities at volume and high skill allow changing the margin in ways low volume and low capitalization provider cannot. Talk to any GPU ML or DC eng and they will rattle off ways here. You can claim these opportunities aren't enough, but you don't seem to be willing to do so. 2. Again, eve…

> Engineering opportunities at volume and high skill allow changing the margin in ways low volume and low capitalization provider cannot Everything depends on this actually being possible and I haven’t seen a lot of information on that so far. DeepSeek‘s publication suggests that it is possible - specifically there was recently a discussion on batching. Google might have some secret sauce with their TPUs (is that why…

There is an interesting subtlety to what you are saying -

* Inferencing is getting cheaper: 40-80% / yr in hardware + 40-80% / yr in software. Annual numbers will change, but for next 5 years, seems fine to assume continued improvement at meaningful levels.

* Subtlety 1: What % of that improvement is only accessible to large providers with bigger workloads and bigger capitalization? Think more opportunities for batching, specialization, bulk purchasing, ... . That edge is where their ability to both underprice others + have a profitability margin here vs being a loss leader. A lot of the annual hw/sw improvement is commoditized for low-scale. Eg, hyperscalers pay 10% less to Nvidia than the next tier of smaller buyers, and I'm unsure of how to think of the margin benefit of custom hw

* Subtlety 2: if things keep going well, there may be a limited window around wirkloads "tricky enough that only they can do it" , eg, if commodity + oss using 2nd tier providers are "good enough" and also reach low COGS, so it's just regular data center stuff, all this becomes unclear again. I can likewise imagine that becoming true of the wider use case of Text, while image/video/audio ends up more specialized

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