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OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

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Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#421
post #56

IMO other than the Microsoft IP issue, I think the biggest thing that has shifted since this acquisition was first in the works is Claude Code has absolutely exploded. Forking an IDE and all the expense that comes with that feels like a waste of effort, considering the number of free/open source CLI agentic tools that are out there. Let's review the current state of things: - Terminal CLI agents are several orders of…

Cursor - co-pilot/AI pair programming usecases.

Claude Code - Agentic/Autonomous coding usecases.

Both have their own place in programming, though there are overlaps.

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#422
post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CC at like a 500% loss Do you have a citation for this? It might be at a loss, but I don’t think it is that extravagant.

The way I am doing the math with my Max subscription and assuming DeepSeek API prices, it is still x5 times cheaper. So either DeepSeek is losing money (unlikely) or Anthropic is losing lots of money (more likely). Grok kinda confirms my suspicions. Assuming DeepSeek prices, I've probably spent north of $100 of Grok compute. I didn't pay Grok or Twitter a single cent. $100 is a lot of loss for a single user.

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why those tools need to fork Visual Studio Code. Wouldn't an extension suffice?

It was so they could close source it.

You can ship clised source extensions

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#424
post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Impossible for a startup to compete with this." its funny to me since xAI literally the "youngest" in this space and recently made an Grok4 that surpass all frontier model it literally not impossible

I mean, that's a startup backed by the richest man in the world who also was engaged with OpenAI in the beginning. I assume startup here means the average one, that has a little bit less of funding and connections.

so is Meta(fb) and Apple but that doesn't seem to be the case

money is "less" important factor, I don't say they don't matters but much less than you would think

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#425
post #56

IMO other than the Microsoft IP issue, I think the biggest thing that has shifted since this acquisition was first in the works is Claude Code has absolutely exploded. Forking an IDE and all the expense that comes with that feels like a waste of effort, considering the number of free/open source CLI agentic tools that are out there. Let's review the current state of things: - Terminal CLI agents are several orders of…

Is this $900M ARR a reliable number? Their base is $20/mth. That would equal 3.75M people paying a sub to Cursor. If literally everyone is on their $200/mth plan, then that would be 375K paid users. There’s 50M VS Code + VS users (May 2025). [1] 7% of all VS Code users having switched to Cursor does not match my personal circle of developers. 0.7% . . . Maybe? But, that would be if everyone using Cursor were paying $…

Enterprise pay more.

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#426
post #208

I went from Emacs to VS Code, then to Cursor, next to Claude Code, which is so good that I feel like I am having half a dozen junior devs at my fingertips, 24/7. Since Claude Code is cli based, I reviewed my cli toolset: Migrated from iTerm2 to Ghostty and Tmux, from Cursor to NeoVim (my God is it good!). Just had a 14h workday with this tooling. It’s so good that I complete the work of weeks and months within days!…

I'm curious to see what you've built with all that extra productivity.

I work at a company with over 700 employees. And there are tons of use cases where a simple CRUD app is sufficient. Or where glue code needs to be written / changed for legacy systems. Or where an OS system like Camunda is deployed and needs to be configured, workflows developed, etc

The reality of companies out there is much simpler than the challenges of a startup that needs to build systems that are state of the art, scale for millions of users, etc There are companies out there that make millions, in areas you‘ve never heard of, and their core business does not depend on software development best practices.

In our company we have an IT team with the median age of fifty, team members who never have developed software, just maintain systems, delegate hard work to expensive consultants.

Now in that setting someone coming from a startup background is like someone coming from the future. I feel like a wizard who can solve problems in days, instead of weeks or months waiting for a consultant to solve.

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why those tools need to fork Visual Studio Code. Wouldn't an extension suffice?

I use Augment extensively and find it superior to cursor in every way - and operates as an extension. It has a really handy task planning interface and meta prompt refinement feature and the costs are remarkably low. The quality of output implantation is higher IMO and I don’t have to do a lot of model selection and don’t get Max model bill explosions. If there’s something Cursor provided that Augment doesn’t via ext…

I think Augment has been flying under the radar for many people, and really reserve better marketing.

I've been using Augment for over a year with IntelliJ, and never understood why my colleagues were all raving about Cursor and Windsurf. I gave Cursor a real try, but it wasn't any better, and the value proposition of having to adopt a dedicated IDE wasn't attractive to me.

A plugin to leverage your existing tools makes a lot more sense than an IDE. Or at least until/if AI agents get so smart that you don't need most of the IDE's functionality, which might change what kinds of tooling are needed when you're in the passenger seat rather than the driver's seat.

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#428
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude Code is totally different paradigm. You don't edit your files directly so there is no tab autocomplete. It's a chat session. There are IDE integrations where you can run it in a terminal session while perusing the files through your IDE, but it's not powering any autocomplete there AFAIK.

are people viewing file diffs in the terminal? surely people aren't just vibing code changes in

I use windsurf to check the diff from Claude Code.

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#429
post #56

IMO other than the Microsoft IP issue, I think the biggest thing that has shifted since this acquisition was first in the works is Claude Code has absolutely exploded. Forking an IDE and all the expense that comes with that feels like a waste of effort, considering the number of free/open source CLI agentic tools that are out there. Let's review the current state of things: - Terminal CLI agents are several orders of…

>What does Cursor/Windsurf offer over VS Code + CC?

A lot of devs are not superstar devs.

They don't want a terminal tool, or anything they have to configure.

A IDE you can just download and 'it just works' has value. And there are companies that will pay.

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#430

I was so surprised (or shocked) to hear that Windsurf was getting acquired for 3 billion dollars, I made an HN post asking about the truth of that news - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43933825 . HN's system didn't like my tone I guess and removed it, lol. But in any case, I just can't see how AI code editors like Windsurf or Cursor, without any proprietary model, can be valued at billions. What's the underlyin…

They both have proprietary models.
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