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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

#541

Post by bwfan123 »

Onavo wrote: post #166
dontlikeyoueith wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft will likely replicate Windsurf and Cursor's features within a year. Probably. > And deliver them with far greater stability and polish That seems ... overly optimistic given MS's history.

Their devtools team is surprisingly competent when they choose to be. Pre-2015, people used Sublime Text, Atom, Textmate, Notepad++, Light Table, Brackets, Emacs/Vim, Intellij. VS code single handedly crushed all of them with code completion and language servers that require zero configuration. Emacs/Vim lost share, Jetbrains (and also Eclipse) were forced to release their own "lightweight" code editors, and everybod…

100%, I swore by emacs, but then switched to vs-code recently, and believe-me, switching editors is one of the hardest things to do due to ingrained muscle-memory - but vs-code made it easy with emacs-mode etc.

vs-code is one of the few products coming of of microsoft that leads the pack by a big margin, and it is no surprise that all of these startups are forking it.

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

#542

Post by datadrivenangel »

saalweachter wrote: post #526
petesergeant wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber feels like such an apt comparison to OpenAI to me. The service they provide is obviously going to be absolutely huge, but no guarantees at all that they’ll win it or be last man standing. I don’t see a world in which generative AI doesn’t continue to be a massive disrupting force, but no particular reason to think Anthropic or OpenAI will still be independent entities in a few years. I’m even more bearish on Ube…

I feel like the value-proposition of Uber was three-fold. 1. Solving a pain-point of many people re: hailing a cab, via an app that works everywhere. 2. Using VC funds to (initially) pay drivers more than you, the customer, were paying them. 3. Ignoring local regulations and passing the savings/convenience on to you. 1 is nice but I don't think they established much of a moat (both drivers and customers are willing t…

1 especially is a social function. Having to have a million different apps is terrible, but if there is too much competition for drivers it's inevitable to churn through apps because of marketplace pricing and rent seeking on all sides

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

#543

Post by AlwaysRock »

RobinL wrote: post #275
cheema33 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By the time my free trial ran out, VSCode had added a LLM chat interface in the sidebar. I am guessing you are talking about GitHub Copilot when you say VSCode. GitHub Copilot is far far inferior product when compared to Cursor, Windsurf or Augment Code. Most people who try almost any Copilot alternative for a reasonable amount of time end up canceling their Copilot subscription. I did, after two months of using bo…

How long ago was that? 6 months ago I switched from VS Code to Cursor, which at the time was FAR superior to Copilot. Around a month ago I switched back to VS Code, and found there's not much difference any more. Autocomplete in VS Code is still less good, but the agent mode in VS Code feels pretty similar to Cursor's (albeit a little slower, perhaps). To be honest I think both are quite limited by context length (in…

Yup. I found cursor to be better but not good enough that it really made that much of a difference in my actual day to day.

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

#544

Post by AlwaysRock »

mirekrusin wrote: post #244
AlwaysRock wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Even a small market share is market share. Plus they are paying to acquire a team of folks who are already in this space and who will, until golden handcuffs come off, keep working in this space. Still an insane number though.

But openai is stronger brand with free publicity - whatever they say/do will instantly show up the same day on all news across the world. The "space" exists for months, there are no people with 10y expertise here, with their brand they can attract any talent they can wish for in this "space", no? You can probably vibe code 80% of it in a week or two?

I guess it's all up to interpretation, but having a brand in one space doesn't necessarily translate to a brand in another. OpenAI doesnt/didnt have a code editor. Now it does/it will.

I'm fairly into llms but it took me awhile to try cursor because the cost of changing editors is very high. I'd probably eventually try a OpenAI editor but only if I saw it was actually getting adoption and good feedback from others.

I'd also argue that while this llm powered editor space is pretty new, the editor space in general is much older.

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

#545

Post by XCSme »

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 buying a company that is dependent on their competitor.

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

#546

Post by leonidasv »

sumedh wrote: post #494
_1tem wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Didnt Jetbrains launch their AI last year, is anyone using it?

They're giving out 1 month free if you're paying for their IDEs already. I've tried it last year and it was very limited, not "agentic". Now they've launched an agentic version called Junie and also gave another 1 month free, and I've tried it again.

It's a nice improvement over the last edition, but still quite not "smart" as Cursor or Windsurf. The agent seems too shortsighted compared to competitors: it may stop looking for files or making edits sooner and you're left with code made with incomplete context (that does not work or just doesn't address your needs). It also does not fix linter/compiler errors from its own output code before finishing, unlike Cursor.

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

#547

Post by anxman »

retornam wrote: post #405
ergocoder wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

$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…

I’m spending more on Cursor every month. Worth every penny. I’ve never given a dime to Jetbrains.

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

#550

Post by therealmarv »

pantulis wrote: post #483
jillesvangurp wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's the case here. Windsurf wasn't leading the agentic coding market. They were doing a decent job but others are bigger. Cursor has the brand recognition and Claude is getting a lot of recognition too. MS has github copilot which is still a good brand and Google has been catching up with Gemini. OpenAI has a new thing called codex but it isn't very good yet. I tried it and it's super flaky. Lot's of…

> OpenAI has a new thing called codex but it isn't very good yet. I tried it and it's super flaky. Lot's of errors and it gets stuck when that happens. I agree with this, not sure the experience of everyone else but I felt like Claude Code is more useful. Meanwhile, I'm keeping tabs on Aider and open-codex, what other options are there?

Thanks for mentioning open-codex. Did not notice that there is a codex fork which is open to other models (update: totally missed that original codex allows that too now). How do you like it? Especially in comparison to Claude Code?
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