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OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

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Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#341

Post by rockwotj »

cwkoss wrote: post #321
matheusmoreira wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they start walling off features like TypeScript 7.0 from forks, the open source pushback will be fierce—and that could backfire hard. Do they have the man power to compete with Microsoft ? Linux managed to do it but Linux is the biggest, most successful free software project there is. Firefox and its forks are a better example. If Mozilla stopped working on Firefox, the forks would be pretty much dead in the wat…

Does microsoft have the wisdom to predict where this line of technology is headed, and/or the agility to course correct when their predictions don't quite hit the mark? Cursor blows copilot out of the water in my experience. Man power clearly isn't the most decisive factor in this battle.

Copilot is limited to 64k context window. Even if the underlying model is gemini with 20x that. It’s gotta be a major reason copilot is so bad in comparison. They are all the same sets of models under the hood

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#342

Post by n_ary »

mirekrusin wrote: post #242

I don't get it. With $3bn budget you can replicate it in few months, promote for free using your own stronger brand and you're left with roughly $3bn in the bank to do whatever you want.

Your sentiment is very common, which reminds me of those days where everyone claimed to be able to clone twitter/airbnb/dropbox/gmail/whatever over the weekend.

The real value lies in a successful execution, Windsurf is live and already has brand popularity with revenue stream. When it gets acquired by a titan, the die hard fans(vibe coders) will gain new trust that the product is not going anywhere and instead has solid future(we don’t yet know if oAI plans to do Msft style acquire, extend, kill yet). Cumulatively, this actually increases the value. Also Windsurf already has established enterprise revenue, hence brand trust and experience is already there.

In summary, an existing live and proven product is worth more any day over 100% uncertainty of building a sufficiently capable team to perfectly execute the same idea in specific deadline and also have the added burden of marketing, market penetration, user acquisition etc.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#343

Post by joseangel_sc »

nicce wrote: post #164
no_wizard wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect JetBrains will never limit this. I've yet to recall anything in the past where they have done this even when they have a similar offering. In fact, their own AI extension appears to be pluggable in and of itself. I think they see the value in being easy to adapt different AI solutions to rather than trying to only provide their own.

JetBrain's main business model depends on buying the editor, and if users still see the overall editor better, any AI plugin support will likely just increase the sales.

100% i like some thinks cursor gives me, but i’m to invested in how to use the navigation inside pycharm, i don’t wanna give up that

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#344

Post by CryptoBanker »

resters wrote: post #209
noitpmeder wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your take on lawyers is absolutely insane. If you don't think the extremely specialized and well trained professionals can successfully navigate contracts then I can't wait for the absolute garbage the LLMs spit out when faced with similar challenges. Honestly, same for doctors and accountants. Unless these model providers are willing to provide "guarantees" that they will compensate for damages faced as a result of…

While malpractice insurance exists for human docs and lawyers, there is not really any difference between an ai-powered lawyer drawing up a contract, an ai-powered doc reviewing a chart and recommending next steps, and a self-driving car making a turn. The most obviously "lethal" case (cars) is already in large scale rollout worldwide. At scale, self-driving car "errors" will fall under general liability insurance co…

> LLMs already write better prose than 95% of humans and models like o3 reason better than 90% of humans on many tasks.

Except except lawyers are ~.4%[1] of the population in the United States, so that 95% isn’t very impressive

[1] https://www.americanbar.org/news/profile-legal-profession/de...

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#345

Post by jonny_eh »

mliker wrote: post #148
jstummbillig wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can write a lot of code, that works, better than vscode can (right now). It's in a lot of ways the OpenAI story itself: Can they keep an edge? Or is there at least something that will keep people from just switching product? Who knows. People have opinions, of course. OpenAIs opinion (which should reasonably count for something, them being the current AI-as-a-product leader) is worth $3B as of today.

Windsurf works well with Claude and Gemini models, so if OpenAI forces Windsurf users to only use OpenAI models, then it wouldn't be as useful.

They'll make ChatGPT the default, and defaults are powerful.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#346

Post by nick__m »

tomrod wrote: post #188
owendarko wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already a bunch of open source, free, and popular "AI coding agent" extensions for VS Code: 1) Cline (1.4mil downloads) 2) Roo Code (a fork of Cline, 450k downloads) Still a drop in the bucket compared to Cursor in terms of # of users, but they're growing pretty fast. Disclaimer: I maintain Kilo Code, which competes with 1) and 2) so I'm pretty familiar with this space/the growth patterns.

Continue.dev as well

I happy to know that I am not the only one that know about continue.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#347

Post by mathgeek »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #312
gexos wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> If they start walling off features like TypeScript 7.0 from forks, the open source pushback will be fierce—and that could backfire hard. Do they have the man power to compete with Microsoft ? Linux managed to do it but Linux is the biggest, most successful free software project there is. Firefox and its forks are a better example. If Mozilla stopped working on Firefox, the forks would be pretty much dead in the wat…

> Do they have the man power to compete with Microsoft?

There are a fair number of examples where smaller companies and/or open source beat Microsoft's entrenched products. Usually a key indicator is that MS's products stagnate (which doesn't yet appear to be happening currently).

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#348

Post by djha-skin »

retornam wrote: post #240

I'm skeptical about this VSCode fork commanding a $3 billion valuation when it depends on API services it doesn't own. What's their moat here? For comparison, JetBrains generates over $400 million in annual revenue and is valued around $7 billion. They've built proprietary technology and deep expertise in that market over decades. If AI (terminology aside) replaces many professional software engineers and programmers…

Did powered table saws replace carpenters?

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#349

Post by beardedwizard »

lolinder wrote: post #281
samdjstephens wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just consider what it fundamentally is: a company at the leading edge of a product category that has found absurdly strong technology/use-case fit, and is growing insanely fast. Looking for a moat in the technology is always a bit of a trap - it’s in the traction, the brand awareness, the user data etc.

> Looking for a moat in the technology is always a bit of a trap - it’s in the traction, the brand awareness, the user data etc. Traction, brand awareness, and user data do not favor Windsurf over GitHub Copilot. The few of us who follow all the new developments are aware that Windsurf has been roughly leading the pack in terms of capabilities, but do not underestimate the power of being bundled into both VS Code and…

But copilot is bundled and is free, and it's still losing to cursor
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