Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 319 posts

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#131

Post by codegeek »

pembrook wrote: post #90

I love tailwind, but I think it’s disingenuous for Adam to claim that “AI” killed the tailwind UI kit business. Ultimately it was Radix/Shadcn (which uses tailwind for styling of course) that killed the need to buy Tailwind’s UI kits by offering all these primitives with good default styling for free. Also, the tailwind UI stuff feels pretty dated at this point in comparison to what’s offered in other free UI librari…

Yea I agree that free UI kits like ShadCN basically blew everyone else away. I mean ShadCN has over 100k Stars on Github which is more than even Tailwind. So you can imagine the popularity. Having said that, I do think that AI is a factor as well because most of these components can now be coded by AI as well.

For example, I now routinely use AI to create UI components and my prompt usually includes "use ShadCN like component here" and even give them specific shadcn component names. The result is usually 90% good enough to start with.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#132

Post by codegeek »

mdasen wrote: post #14

This is good, but it doesn't necessarily mean that Tailwind is out of the financial difficulty that we talked about yesterday. You can sponsor Tailwind for as little as $6,000/year. 29 companies were already sponsoring Tailwind including 16 companies at the $60,000/year level. Maybe Google AI Studio has decided to shell out a lot more, but it could also be a relatively small sponsorship compared to the $1.1M in spons…

Not $6000/Year but $60,000/Year. Not sure if you missed a 0. Google AI is listed as a Partner sponsor which costs $5000/Month or $60,000/Year. Since Adam's audio and twitter post went viral, he has aded about 5 partner sponsors netting total of additional $300k/Year right there. And a few other smaller sponsors as well.

Overall, this has been a win for Adam and Tailwind.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#134

Post by tjwebbnorfolk »

dust42 wrote: post #19
atonse wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has poured untold millions into open source over the last couple of decades, not just by sponsorships, but also by employing contributors, etc. I don't think that'll change with AI. They just needed to be reminded about the financials of Tailwind and I'm sure it was an easy conversation internally.

> Google has poured untold millions into open source over the last couple of decades, not just by sponsorships, but also by employing contributors, etc. And Google has profited untold hundreds of billions of open source over the last couple of decades. They just need to be reminded of it. Edit: Haha, getting downvoted! Never underestimate the power of tens of thousands of Googlers on HN... Look, I use Gmail, Google m…

People probably downvoted your comment because you sound angry and bitter. Get over yourself.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#135

Post by redox99 »

Last year they claimed they had $800k in ARR from sponsors alone[1]. Add to that whatever they made by selling Tailwind Plus ($299 individual / $979 teams one time payment)

How much money do you really need to maintain a CSS library? I understand everyone wants a really fancy office in an expensive city, lots of employees with very high salaries and generous perks, and so on. But all that is not needed to maintain a CSS library (that is kind of feature complete already).

I think Tailwind was making a lot of money (surely over a million), expanded and got bloated unnecessarily just because they had all that money, and now that their income dropped to what still is a lot of money for a CSS library, they're angry that they have to cut expenses to a more reasonable level.

I guess it worked out for them because now they have even more sponsoring.

And they used the AI bad get out of jail free card when a lot of their drop in sales probably comes from shadcn/ui and others which offer something similar for free.

[1] https://petersuhm.com/posts/2025/

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#136

Post by nayroclade »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #24
blibble wrote: post #8

I suppose this an attempt to try and head off the stories about "AI" killing open source

If your business can easily get destroyed by AI, then the problem is your business model.

Perhaps, but training AIs relies on the existence of libraries like Tailwind, sites like Stack Overflow, Wikipedia, etc. If people stop using all those businesses and services and projects and they eventually disappear, we're stuck relying on asking LLMs whose knowledge is based on a dated snapshot of an internet that no longer exists.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#138

Post by naedish »

mdasen wrote: post #14

This is good, but it doesn't necessarily mean that Tailwind is out of the financial difficulty that we talked about yesterday. You can sponsor Tailwind for as little as $6,000/year. 29 companies were already sponsoring Tailwind including 16 companies at the $60,000/year level. Maybe Google AI Studio has decided to shell out a lot more, but it could also be a relatively small sponsorship compared to the $1.1M in spons…

If the description for each tier is correct then it seems like Google AI Studio is an Ambassador only ($2,500 per month). This tier includes your company logo on the homepage. The Partner tier ($5,000 per month) includes placing your logo at the top of the sponsor list and Google AI Studio is at the end of the sponsor list.

Edit

Looking at the tailwind.css repo[1] they are a Partner. Not sure why they are at the end of the sponsor list in that case. Though now I look at the bottom of the sponsors page I see they repeat the Sponsors again at the bottom and directly indicate each companies support tier.

1. https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss.com/commit/7a98b...

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#140

Post by guluarte »

arcfour wrote: post #103
minimaxir wrote: post #7

Vercel is also now sponsoring Tailwind CSS: https://x.com/rauchg/status/2009336725043335338

I was honestly surprised they weren't already, given how heavily they use and promote it! Good to see they are helping out now too, though.

companies are suddenly sponsoring tailwind just for marketing
Post reply on HN