When news broke that OpenAI was in talks to get AI coding companyWindsurf for $3 billion, among the first questions on the mind of anyone following the area was likely: Why not purchase Cursor creator Anysphere instead?After all, OpenAI Startup Fund has actually been a financier in Anysphere, the maker of Cursor, since the quickly-growing coding assistants seed round in late 2023.
(Anysphere is often referred to by its item name, Cursor.) It turns out that OpenAI indeed approached Anysphere in 2024 and once again previously this year about a potential acquisition, according to a report from CNBC.
The talks failed.
Rather, Anysphere has been in talks to raise capital at about $10 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported last month.OpenAIs prefer to move on to acquisition discussions with another coding assistant maker signals how important catching a slice of the code generation market has ended up being for the ChatGPT maker.
Windsurf is producing about $40 million in annualized repeating earnings (ARR), A Technology NewsRoom reported in February.
On The Other Hand, Anyspheres Cursor supposedly makes about $200 million on an ARR basis.While OpenAIs Codex CLI agent, which the business launched Wednesday, can also write and edit code, its effort to purchase Windsurf suggests the company doesnt wish to await CLI to acquire traction with clients.