Congratulations!
Can you talk a bit more about your journey without raising funds?
Also what does HN think of that path today when trying to launch a new AI startup?
Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI
41–50 of 157 posts
Re: Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI
#42The level of aqui-hires is getting interesting - at this point, it appears that if one wants one's career to progress, you need to start some kind of tiny startup like Astral or Bun and hope to be notable enough you can get acquired by someone like OpenAI or Anthropic. It certainly makes the idea of a career progression / promotion more challenging than it used to be, but perhaps it also opens up some new opportuniti…
It also kills competition and disincentivizes providing long term value. I’m not sure how making the job market more like gambling does anything positive for the majority of people
Re: Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI
#43The level of aqui-hires is getting interesting - at this point, it appears that if one wants one's career to progress, you need to start some kind of tiny startup like Astral or Bun and hope to be notable enough you can get acquired by someone like OpenAI or Anthropic. It certainly makes the idea of a career progression / promotion more challenging than it used to be, but perhaps it also opens up some new opportuniti…
It’s been true for a while, but AI seems to have exaggerated it. To me it reinforces the idea that LLMs created a “K” shaped talent market. Those whose are good become even more valuable.
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Re: Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI
#44[flagged]
Re: Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI
#45Note that this is fundamentally different from the Astral acquisition. At the end of their announcement, they stated: > Cirrus CI will shut down effective Monday, June 1, 2026. And earlier in the article: > Joining OpenAI allows us to extend the mission we started with Cirrus Labs: building new kinds of tooling and environments that make engineers more effective, for both human engineers and agentic engineers. It isn…
Just want to note that we will continue maintaining and improving our virtualization solutions actually with even greater attention. SaaS options like Cirrus CI and Cirrus Runners will eventually wind down so we can focus on incorporating pieces internally.
If your scope includes making the Codex web app environments have additional functionality I look forward to it. More enterprise features and yaml backed pipelines.
Re: Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI
#46Congratulations! Can you talk a bit more about your journey without raising funds? Also what does HN think of that path today when trying to launch a new AI startup?
Thank you! Full journey is too long for a comment here.
It was hard and I was lucky with my previous pre-IPO gigs at Airbnb and Twitter so I had some bootstrap fund. In retrospective a dev tools startup in 2017 with no network and no VC support was a crazy idea but I was young and didn’t think thought too much.
Then it was long 8 years of raw work and constant questioning this choice. Then finally a third component: luck. In 2024-2025 it kind of grew organically due to market changes and back in October 2025 I finally stopped questioning the future of Cirrus Labs.
My only advice if I may, try to get your first dollar from your startup while you are employed.
Re: Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI
#47Note that this is fundamentally different from the Astral acquisition. At the end of their announcement, they stated: > Cirrus CI will shut down effective Monday, June 1, 2026. And earlier in the article: > Joining OpenAI allows us to extend the mission we started with Cirrus Labs: building new kinds of tooling and environments that make engineers more effective, for both human engineers and agentic engineers. It isn…
Is Sam or family an investor in them anyways?
Re: Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI
#48Note that this is fundamentally different from the Astral acquisition. At the end of their announcement, they stated: > Cirrus CI will shut down effective Monday, June 1, 2026. And earlier in the article: > Joining OpenAI allows us to extend the mission we started with Cirrus Labs: building new kinds of tooling and environments that make engineers more effective, for both human engineers and agentic engineers. It isn…
Is Sam or family an investor in them anyways?
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Re: Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI
#49Note that this is fundamentally different from the Astral acquisition. At the end of their announcement, they stated: > Cirrus CI will shut down effective Monday, June 1, 2026. And earlier in the article: > Joining OpenAI allows us to extend the mission we started with Cirrus Labs: building new kinds of tooling and environments that make engineers more effective, for both human engineers and agentic engineers. It isn…
Is Sam or family an investor in them anyways?
We were 100% bootstrapped with no outside capital or support/advisory.
Re: Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI
#50AI companies need a surprising amount of people.
It's kind of like electric cars charged with electricity from coal power plants.