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Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

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Re: Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

#41

Post by artdigital »

HyprMusic wrote: post #37

This feels like a cheap trick to drive users towards Claude Code. It's likely no coincidence that this happened at the same time they announced subscription access to Claude Code. The Windsurf team repeatedly stated that they're running at a loss so all this seems to have achieved is giving OpenAI an excuse to cut their 3rd party costs and drive more Windsurf users towards their own models.

> This feels like a cheap trick to drive users towards Claude Code

How did you come to this conclusion? It’s very much like he remarked: OpenAI acquired Windsurf, OpenAI is Anthropics direct competitor.

It doesn’t make strategic sense to sell Claude to OpenAI. OpenAI could train against Claude weights, or OpenAI can cut out Anthropic at any moment to push their own models.

The partnership isn’t long lasting so it doesn’t make sense to continue it.

Re: Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

#42

Post by [deleted] »

ramesh31 wrote: post #40
HyprMusic wrote: post #37

This feels like a cheap trick to drive users towards Claude Code. It's likely no coincidence that this happened at the same time they announced subscription access to Claude Code. The Windsurf team repeatedly stated that they're running at a loss so all this seems to have achieved is giving OpenAI an excuse to cut their 3rd party costs and drive more Windsurf users towards their own models.

Nobody is actually using Windsurf. It was an acquihire and a squashing of competition that caught ground in the enterprise contract market really early. Anyone doing agentic coding seriously is using open source tooling with direct token pricing to the major model providers. Windsurf/Cursor/et. al are just expensive middlemen with no added value.

[deleted]

Re: Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

#44

Post by peterhadlaw »

ramesh31 wrote: post #40
HyprMusic wrote: post #37

This feels like a cheap trick to drive users towards Claude Code. It's likely no coincidence that this happened at the same time they announced subscription access to Claude Code. The Windsurf team repeatedly stated that they're running at a loss so all this seems to have achieved is giving OpenAI an excuse to cut their 3rd party costs and drive more Windsurf users towards their own models.

Nobody is actually using Windsurf. It was an acquihire and a squashing of competition that caught ground in the enterprise contract market really early. Anyone doing agentic coding seriously is using open source tooling with direct token pricing to the major model providers. Windsurf/Cursor/et. al are just expensive middlemen with no added value.

Which open source agentic tooling are you using. I'm a fan of Aider but I find it lacking the agentic side of things. I've looked at Goose, Plandex, Opencode, and etc. Which do you like?

Re: Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

#45

Post by dmix »

deadbabe wrote: post #43
wincy wrote: post #34

Wow excited for when Anthropic buys Cursor in a couple months and I get locked out of using OpenAI models with it. This is depressing. I just want stuff to work.

Aren’t the OpenAI models worse than the alternatives?

The difference is likely very marginal in practice for what most people are doing. o3 and 4o do programming just fine.

Re: Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

#47

Post by selcuka »

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #26
princealiiiii wrote: post #8

Any app built on top of these model providers could become a competitor to these providers. Since the model providers are currently in the lowest-margin part of the business, it is likely they will try to expand in to the app layer and start pulling the rug from under these businesses built on top of them. Amazon had a similar tactic, where it would use other sellers on its marketplace to validate market demand for p…

Even to the extent that’s true, that doesn’t seem to be the issue here. OpenAI is acquiring Windsurf which is its most direct competitor.

True. Otherwise Anthropic would cut access to other code assistants too as they all compete with Claude Code.

Re: Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

#48

Post by jerpint »

deadbabe wrote: post #43
wincy wrote: post #34

Wow excited for when Anthropic buys Cursor in a couple months and I get locked out of using OpenAI models with it. This is depressing. I just want stuff to work.

Aren’t the OpenAI models worse than the alternatives?

That may be true today but not in a few weeks, ideally you have access to all models whenever

Re: Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf

#50

Post by selcuka »

wincy wrote: post #34

Wow excited for when Anthropic buys Cursor in a couple months and I get locked out of using OpenAI models with it. This is depressing. I just want stuff to work.

Anthropic models are slightly better for coding tasks anyway. I believe Windsurf is in more trouble.
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