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Astral to Join OpenAI

astral.sh

161–170 of 951 posts

Re: Astral to Join OpenAI

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't they just vibe code a uv replacement?

They can, everyone can. Good luck vibe coding marketshare for your new tool.

This. It's valuable b/c if you have many thousands of python devs using astral tooling all day, and it tightly integrates with subscription based openai products...likelihood of openai product usage increases. Same idea with the anthropic bun deal. Remains to be seen what those integrations are and if it translates to more subs, but that's the current thesis. Buy user base -> cram our ai tool into the workflow of that user base.

Re: Astral to Join OpenAI

#162
post #67

A concern: More and more plainly, OpenAI and Anthropic are making plays to own (and lease) the "means of production" in software. OK - I'm a pretty happy renter right now. As they gobble up previously open software stacks, how viable is it that these stacks remain open? It seems perfectly sensible to me that these providers and their users alike have an interest in further centralizing the dev lifecycle - eg, if Clau…

If it ever goes bad, well I hope that that’s an impetus for new open source projects to be started — and with improvements over and lessons learned from incumbent technologies, right at the v1 of said projects.

If it goes bad? It’s too late by that point. And how is open source going to compete with billions of investment dollars?

Re: Astral to Join OpenAI

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mindshare and a central piece of the python package management ecosystem.

Most popular product on the planet acquires a random python packaging org for mindshare? What am I not seeing here?

I didn't know Claude bought Astral! /S

Re: Astral to Join OpenAI

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are they buying?

IMO, they are buying business just to put them down later to avoid potential competition. The recipe is not new, it has been practiced by Google/Microsoft for many years.

What competition was OpenAI likely to face from a team working on fast Python tooling?

Re: Astral to Join OpenAI

#166
So instead of finally building an enterprise-grade package manager where you could pay for validated, verified and secure packages, we're going to vibe project management and let a slop-spiggot fill the trough. Brilliant. Incredibly pleased that the last sane tools in the entire python ecosystem are getting gutted to discourage the last few non-braindead devs from bothering.

Re: Astral to Join OpenAI

#168
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are they buying?

> Second, to our investors, especially Casey Aylward from Accel, who led our Seed and Series A, and Jennifer Li from Andreessen Horowitz, who led our Series B They are buying out investors, it's like musical chairs. The liquidity is going to be better on OpenAI, so it pleases everyone (less pressure from investors, more liquidity for investors). The acquisition is just a collateral effect.

I can see why the former investors and Astral founders would like that, what I don't see is what OpenAI get out of the deal.

Re: Astral to Join OpenAI

#170
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Second, to our investors, especially Casey Aylward from Accel, who led our Seed and Series A, and Jennifer Li from Andreessen Horowitz, who led our Series B They are buying out investors, it's like musical chairs. The liquidity is going to be better on OpenAI, so it pleases everyone (less pressure from investors, more liquidity for investors). The acquisition is just a collateral effect.

Are you implying that the revenue multiple on this acquisition is lower than openAIs and that they'd be making money by acquiring and folding into their valuation multiple? I think that's not the case and I would wager non existent. This was an acquihire (the author of ripgrep, rg, which codex uses nearly exclusively for file operations, is part of the team at Astral). So, 99% acquihire , 1% other financial trickery.…

They raised 4M USD, they have 26 full-time employees (they pay 120200K / yr, cf https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/523411-93 ).

It means the company almost reached their runway, so all these employees would have to find a job.

It's a very very good product, but it is open-source and Apache / MIT, so difficult to defend from anyone just clicking on fork. Especially a large company like OpenAI who has massive distribution.

Now that they hired the employees, they have no more guarantees than if they made a direct offer to them.

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