I don't get it. Why would Anthropic need to own a JS runtime?
Because they have a product that makes $1bn+ a year that depends on having a good, stable, cross-platform JS runtime.
You're describing Node.js which has existed for the last 15 years
Anthropic acquires Bun
51–60 of 1001 posts
Re: Anthropic acquires Bun
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looks like they are acquiring the team rather than the product
No, they're clearly acquiring the technology. They're betting Claude Code on Bun, they have an invested interest in the health of Bun.
That was my thinking is, this would be useful for Claude Code.
Re: Anthropic acquires Bun
#53I don't really see how Bun fits as an acquisition for an AI company. This seems more like "we have tons of capital and we want to buy something great" than "Bun is essential to our core business model".
If Anthropic wants to own code development in the future, owning the full platform (including the runtime) makes sense. Programming languages all are a balance between performance/etc and making it easy for a human to interact with. This balance is going to shit as AI writes more code (and I assume Anthropic wants a future where humans might not even see the code, but rather an abstraction of it... after all, all cod…
"the full platform"
Acquisition of Apple Swift division incoming?
Re: Anthropic acquires Bun
#54I don't really see how Bun fits as an acquisition for an AI company. This seems more like "we have tons of capital and we want to buy something great" than "Bun is essential to our core business model".
Does this acquisition mean Claude Code the CLI is more valuable than entiriety of Bun?
It certainly generated more revenue, so this is not surprising?
Re: Anthropic acquires Bun
#55It's more honest than the Replicate answer but I think inevitably if you can't raise the next round and you get distracted by the shiny AI that this is the path taken by many teams. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. There was an exuberant time when all the OSS things were getting funded, and now all AI things get funded. For many engineer founders, it's a better fit to go build deep technical stuff inside a bigger company. If I had that chance I would probably have taken it too. Good luck to the Bun team!
Re: Anthropic acquires Bun
#56Congrats... > Long-term stability. a home and resources so people can safely bet their stack on Bun. Isn't it the opposite? Now we've tied Bun to "AI" and if the AI bubble or hype or whatever bursts or dies down it'd impact Bun. > We had over 4 years of runway to figure out monetization. We didn't have to join Anthropic. There's honestly a higher chance of Bun sticking out that runway than the current AI hype still b…
Yeah, no reader of tech news will take an acquisition of a company with four years of runway as anything but decreasing the odds their product will still be around (and useful to the same audience…) in four years. Even without being tied to a company with lots of exposure to a probable bubble.
How so? Presumably Jarred got a nice enough payout that if Anthropic failed, he would not need to work. At that point, he's more than welcome to take the fully MIT licensed Bun and fork it to start another company or just continue to work on it himself if he so chooses.
Re: Anthropic acquires Bun
#57Well this just created a lot of work for me. Everything’s turning to shit at an alarming rate.
Re: Anthropic acquires Bun
#58I don't get it. Why would Anthropic need to own a JS runtime?
Because they have a product that makes $1bn+ a year that depends on having a good, stable, cross-platform JS runtime.
I'm still confused. Why not just pour a ton of resources into it since it's open source. I guess dev mindshare? It is a great product
Re: Anthropic acquires Bun
#59Hope nobody buys Astral or Python is f*cked.
Then it would probably be back to Poetry. Or some other newcomer, or maybe a fork of uv.
Honestly, given the constant rollercoaster of version management and building tools for Python the move to something else would be expected rather than surprising.
I’ve seems like a great tool, but I remember thinking the same about piping, too.
Re: Anthropic acquires Bun
#60Congrats... > Long-term stability. a home and resources so people can safely bet their stack on Bun. Isn't it the opposite? Now we've tied Bun to "AI" and if the AI bubble or hype or whatever bursts or dies down it'd impact Bun. > We had over 4 years of runway to figure out monetization. We didn't have to join Anthropic. There's honestly a higher chance of Bun sticking out that runway than the current AI hype still b…
I say don't muddy the water with the public panic over "will it won't it" bubble burst predictions. The effective demand for Opus 4.5 is bottomless; the models will only get better. People will always want a code model as good as we have now, let alone better. Bun securing default status in the best coding model is a win-win-win
> I say don't muddy the water with the public panic over "will it won't it" bubble burst predictions.
It does matter. The public ultimately determines how much they get in funding if at all.
> The effective demand for Opus 4.5 is bottomless; the models will only get better.
The demand for the Internet is bottomless. Doesn't mean Dotcom didn't crash.
There are lots of scenarios this can play out, e.g. Anthropic fails to raise a certain round because money dried up. OpenAI buys Anthropic but decides they don't need Bun and closes out the project.