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OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

bloomberg.com

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

#411

Post by habosa »

Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see many comments here talking about how this is a competitive move by OpenAI against Anthropic?

From what I've heard most people using/liking these agentic IDEs are using Claude models to power them, they seem to be the best at writing code. By buying Windsurf (and trying to buy Cursor) OpenAI can figure out why Claude is better at this task, fix GPT, and then make GPT the default for the coding use case.

Not sure it's worth $3B, but that's also not a lot to them when they can raise unlimited money at any time,

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

#412

Post by bufferoverflow »

blueboo wrote: post #269
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…

OpenAI needs a product team hiring is hard it's a high-functioning team swimming in contemporary design and eng practices code is emerging as an important battleground OpenAI has the $$$

I bet they can hire best minds in the world for a fraction of $3 billion.

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

#413

Post by CSMastermind »

People seem to be pretty negative about this but of all the AI dev tools I've evaluated it's the only one that's felt meaningfully better than just using the web interfaces of the various frontier models.

I don't think it's good value for the money but pretending it's just a VSCode fork that wraps LLMs is underselling it. There's something they're doing that makes them better than Cursor, Claude Code, etc.

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

#414

Post by ninetyninenine »

ergocoder wrote: post #364
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…

JetBrains makes $400M in revenue and is 10+ years old. Cursor is 1 year old and makes $300M in revenue. One is going to be valued at a much higher multiple than the other.

I feel jetbrains is squandering an opportunity here. Cursor is significantly easier to build then any IDE in the jetbrains ecosystem. The technology jetbrains is very hard to replicate. While the technology cursor uses should be trivial to replicate.

If jetbrains can combine there IDE technology with cursor technology, that would be ideal.

I think the problem is jetbrains tech is sort of already very biased in a certain direction and it's hard for them to pivot as fast into this new AI direction.

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

#415

Post by ninetyninenine »

djha-skin wrote: post #348
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?

Yes. That's the problem. You think the answer is no, but the answer is actually yes.

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

#416

Post by sagarpatil »

bko wrote: post #29

Incredible timeline to a $3B exit > Windsurf began in 2021 as Exafunction, founded by MIT graduates Varun Mohan and Douglas Chen. The company initially focused on GPU optimization before pivoting to AI-assisted coding tools, launching Codeium, which later evolved into Windsurf. > Series B (January 2024): $65 million at a $500 million valuation. > Series C (September 2024): $150 million, led by General Catalyst, at a…

I’ve been a WindSurf customer since day one. It was my first true AI agentic experience.

[Dev mode] While working on Alembic migrations I broke one of my migration files. After an hour of manual debugging I handed the task to WindSurf. It methodically checked every config file, applied the migrations one by one, and narrowed the issue to a single file. It rewrote the migration, verified the fix, wrote tests, ensured everything passed, and opened a PR. I reviewed it and it worked flawlessly.

Regarding the acquisition I don’t understand why OAI would pay $3 B. The team is strong, they have lots of data, and the agentic flow is great, but all of that feels commoditized.

Claude Code launched two months ago and I prefer it to WindSurf, Cursor, and Aider. Augment Code also ranks above WindSurf for me.

If I were in Sam’s place I would have doubled or tripled down on Codex CLI. Just my 2 cents.

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

#417

Post by adventured »

sagarpatil wrote: post #416
bko wrote: post #29

Incredible timeline to a $3B exit > Windsurf began in 2021 as Exafunction, founded by MIT graduates Varun Mohan and Douglas Chen. The company initially focused on GPU optimization before pivoting to AI-assisted coding tools, launching Codeium, which later evolved into Windsurf. > Series B (January 2024): $65 million at a $500 million valuation. > Series C (September 2024): $150 million, led by General Catalyst, at a…

I’ve been a WindSurf customer since day one. It was my first true AI agentic experience. [Dev mode] While working on Alembic migrations I broke one of my migration files. After an hour of manual debugging I handed the task to WindSurf. It methodically checked every config file, applied the migrations one by one, and narrowed the issue to a single file. It rewrote the migration, verified the fix, wrote tests, ensured…

They're paying $3 billion because money is hyper plentiful for OpenAI at present. Basically because they can. Money isn't their problem right now, it's not a scarce resource (maybe it will be in the future of course). They're trying to capture and lock-in, so as the hurdles and regulations go up they're one of the huge winners left standing.

Try replacing Uber today, it's impossible. Nobody is going to give you billions of dollars to try to do it. It'd be an absolute nightmare to attempt it.

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

#418

Post by camdenreslink »

retornam wrote: post #400
goodluckchuck wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If software engineers are more effective, I would expect there to be more software engineers. They’ll put out more and better code. More code means more engineers. The contrary view is like saying gold miners are finding more gold, and it’s easier than ever, so we expect folks are going to leave town.

If your assertion was true, we would see a hiring boom across the board, instead of mass layoffs and hiring freezes throughout our industry

LLMs aren't the cause of mass layoffs and hiring freezes. The end of ZIRP, uncertainty in the macro and offshoring are the cause. AI is just something executives like to say recently when they do layoffs ("we'll be more efficient with cutting edge technology!").

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

#419

Post by Mtinie »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #410
mvkel wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value is in the prompts being sent to OpenAI. Massive training depository. Only thing better would be a social network, which supposedly they're working on.

But OpenAI already knows every single prompt sent to its models. They don't need to buy Windsurf for that.

Now they also get to see what is sent to Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, etc., and what is returned. At scale, for a prime area of concern.
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