OpenAI is reportedly in talks to buy Windsurf for $3B
From TechCrunch:
"Windsurf, the maker of a popular AI coding assistant, is in talks to be acquired by OpenAI for about $3 billion, Bloomberg reported."
This is pretty crazy especially since the OpenAI Startup Fund is one of @Cursor 's biggest investors (source).
What do you all make of this? Good news? Bad news?
Replies
Expected some kind of special partnership when Windsurf decided to give the free week for ChatGPT-4.1 and discounted pricing afterwards. Didn't expect them to sell out.
Maybe both Cursor and Windsurf will merge, and one will stay. Like earlier VS Code and Atom both were owned by Github and Atom was deprecated.
Microsoft also doubling down in Copilot and they had some kind of partnerships with OpenAI so don't know how that will pan out.
@admiralrohan Agree. $3B exit in ~4 years is pretty good if you're going to sell out though!
@admiralrohan @steveb I'd say it's more than a good outcome! We have to remember that OpenAI probably had 10-20 investments in similar companies, with the plan to gobble up 1-5 of them when the time is right. We still live in the world of big tech eats little tech, so sell when you're hot (within reason, of course) or risk selling too late when no one really cares and the deal definitely wont be favorable.
I am one of the early adopters of Windsurf. I even wrote a piece about it https://hackernoon.com/riding-the-wave-my-journey-from-vscode-to-windsurf. It is indeed interesting times. Wow!
@edwinliavaa It would be a shame if OpenAI kills it or restricts the model usage.
@edwinliavaa @steveb Why they would do that?
@admiralrohan It would make sense to restrict it to just OpenAI models. By killing, I mean I hope it doesn't go down the route of rebranding into some other, less useful OpenAI product or lose the velocity of updates to the IDE.
@steveb They can shadow ban by giving discounts for their models, eventually they will gather more data on coding patterns which will help them improve the models.
This is the usual manipulation / influence method in capitalist systems which helps all parties. Lets see.
@edwinliavaa @steveb If Windsurf continues to give GPT 4.1 at discounted rate then it would be good deal for devs + a claude challenger in coding market.
I just hope they won't shut off Deepseek free version.
Thanks for sharing @steveb , that makes totally sense to me. There is a huge hesitation about which model to use in your vibe coding tool, and Claude has definitely a shinier brand to developers than OpenAI.
So if there is so much competition on API level, adding an interface integration can help OpenAI differentiate, as they can offer Windsurf + GPTx bundles: integrated billing, visibility on token consumption, potentially specific tools or feature... anything you can expect from a vertical product.
So that's great news.
@denis_sigal It seems like Claude is the de facto best coding model so it'd be a shame to put a wall around OpenAI models within Windsurf. I hope they don't do it!
It’s a bold move. If true, OpenAI securing both Cursor (via Startup Fund) and Windsurf could signal a deeper play to control the developer tooling ecosystem at its foundation. Great for consolidation of talent and models—but risky if it narrows innovation diversity.
@parth_ahir Good read!