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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

#511

Post by arrowsmith »

moeadham wrote: post #428
sagarpatil wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

sometimes companies are acquired for things the public has not yet seen.

In this case, maybe it's an acqui-hire?

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

#513

Post by jillesvangurp »

justanything wrote: post #495
jillesvangurp wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not replace but it allows me to scale what we do for things we previously would have dropped because it would require growing the team, which we can't really afford. It's a case of getting a bit more out of developers in terms of quantity and scope (mostly this) of what they do. Not a full developer but enough for it to be meaningful. But it's not nothing either. Worth paying for. AI is a lot cheaper than a developer…

Thank you for responding :) So, would you consider it a bad idea to get into web dev, more specifically backend and infra? Do you think using LLMs can accelerate learning software dev and programming skills?

I would look forward to the next 20 years and not backward to the last 20.

The whole frontend/backend distinction did not really exist until the web. And infrastructure is definitely something that should be automated far more than it currently is. If it needs babysitting by a team of devops, you just created a lot of work rather than automating/solving it. Tedious and repetitive. It has "AI will make this a lot easier" written all over it.

So, just be ready for the ambition level to be raised for developers. Learn to build the whole system, not just bits and pieces of the system. Lean on AI to get stuff done and figure things out. It's all just code. None of it is really that hard. But it can be a lot of work if you do all of it manually.

And let's be honest, agentic tools are showing promise and great progress but they are nowhere close to independently working on existing code bases. That's not how I use them. But they are great for problem solving, debugging, prototyping, exploring some new languages and APIs, and generally taking care of more tedious coding tasks.

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

#514

Post by nhumrich »

_1tem wrote: post #465
ninetyninenine wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cert…

> If jetbrains can combine there IDE technology with cursor technology, that would be ideal. Just give them some time, they're not stupid. I'd drop Cursor in an instant once JetBrains catches up, because IntelliJ IDEs are just a way more powerful.

Try out Junie

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

#515

Post by lanthissa »

Havoc wrote: post #512

Very strange move. They already have the models and their partner MS is providing the base editor. So they’re paying 3bn for the integration and clients basically? Seems pricey

they're paying to aquire places where you can sell tokens at a markup, because the future is multiple base models that are good enough for most user tasks where user gateways play the base model providers off each other and capture a lot of the value

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

#516

Post by jjallen »

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…

Because they have users and OpenAI has seen the massive drop off in coding usage since Claude Code came out. My personal Chatgpt decline is at least 99%. It’s also 1% of their current market value. So not really a big deal.

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

#517

Post by lolinder »

blackoil wrote: post #473
retornam wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$400M in real revenue versus $300M in annual recurring revenue (ARR) are totally different things. Real revenue is money actually earned, while ARR just multiplies one month's subscription revenue ($25M) by 12, ignoring customer churn. Startups love flashing ARR figures because "$300M ARR" sounds impressive, but without knowing churn rates, they might never actually collect that full amount. JetBrains however collect…

Unless you have reason to believe the revenue is declining in recent months or will decline in near future, ARR is a better metric. last year real revenue made sense only for low growth companies.

Cursor just lost access to the extension marketplace and key proprietary plugins that they were using against Microsoft's terms, Windsurf has been eating a chunk of their mindshare, and Copilot is catching up.

That's three good reasons to believe that lots of people will be cancelling in the next months unless something changes.

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

#518

Post by sumedh »

Androider wrote: post #43
sidcool wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a oversimplified view. It doesn't matter if it's a fork. It has customers and paying ones. And it has a brand. That's more than enough. $3 billion would be peanuts for OpenAI

VSCode must have over 100 times the user base of Windsurf and Cursor combined. All Microsoft needs to do is implement a halfway decent version of the context management features these forks added. That alone would be enough to halt user migration. For users who've already switched to the forks, the cost of switching back is essentially zero, especially if Microsoft begins introducing changes that break fork compatibi…

> All Microsoft needs to do is implement a halfway decent version

and still MS could not build a chat App, they had to acquire Skype. Google could not build a social network.

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

#519

Post by boleary-gl »

alasano wrote: post #263
oofbaroomf wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP didn't say Cline/Roo charged anything on top.

The comparison table on the kilo site says "OpenRouter without 5% markup" and only puts a checkbox next to kilo.

Yes - with our built-in provider, we provide all the models that OpenRouter provides but without OpenRouter's 5% markup. We provide them at cost (the AI provider cost)

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

#520

Post by dayjah »

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…

I was involved in an M&A once; my role was to evaluate the technology and determine how long it would take us to build a competitive product. If it was less than some X then we’d build it, greater than X and we’d buy. The function for X was not clear to me from my perspective; it had legal fees involved, etc.

The person leading M&A said an intangible aspect of the price is what it does to the adjacent market. If the leading product A is valued during a raise at $Y, and you buy the next best product B at 1/10 that, you cause future issues with raises for A.

Might this be an attempt to clip Cursors wings?

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