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Why couldn’t OpenAI vibe code their own Windsurf/Cursor competitor? (Serious question). OpenAI is a technology company constantly in search of productization (

Why couldn’t OpenAI vibe code their own Windsurf/Cursor competitor? (Serious question). OpenAI is a technology company constantly in search of productization (ChatGPT, Sora, Dall-e), and they’ve been really good at creating product interest that converts to acquisition. An IDE is much more complex than a chat app, but given their literal billions of dollars and familiarity with developer tooling, this is a down-stack build that they could dogfood off their own tech. And especially given that some of these tools were built by tiny teams (Cursor is what, 10 people?), is this like Google and Facebook’s implicit admission that they can’t “build and grow” anymore, and need to turn to acquisitions to fuel growth?

1zael 1y ago
They are just too focused on more important problems to solve, primarily around model improvement and getting to AGI.
echan00 1y ago
They could. They prob need talent though, considering how much fish they're frying
ivanbalepin 1y ago
it still takes time to spec out, build and sell to a comparable size user base, even with 10 people. And you're not guaranteed the same results if you just try to clone all of that. If the price is right, why not take the shortcut.
- goopthink 1y ago
  Is $3 billion the right price? That might be what Windsurf is being valued at (cue the “selling to willing buyers at currently fair market prices” meme), but that’s like saying “it would cost OpenAI more than $3b to staff from zero, build a competitor, and acquire a comparable volume of paying users” … and that feels like an insane statement given the implications therein? Especially given that Windsurf (and I think Cursor too) is a VSCode fork and OpenAI is cozy enough with Microsoft? It’s not even a zero to one build.
  - ivanbalepin 1y ago
    if they are optimizing for cost, which they are obviously not, then of course it would take them less to build. If they are optimizing for time, and the actual aforementioned "vibe code" step may not even be the most time-consuming part, then yes, it may be the right price.
fullstackwife 1y ago
Anyone can vibe code their own Windsurf/Cursor alternative, and adjust it accordingly to their needs. You don't need majority of the features, most of them are developed because of the usual "large enterprise customer wants a feature" mantra. The real value comes from the underlying model anyway. This looks more like a short term tactical move, and the goal is to improve their "API usage" KPIs, because compared to Gemini/Claude it looks not good. (majority of traffic are chatgpt.com free users)
LZ_Khan 1y ago
Well I assume that's what Anthropic and Google are doing with Claude Code and Firebase Studio. The main thing is marketing and userbase, which shouldn't be underestimated.
ramesh31 1y ago
They couldn’t care less about the tech. This was entirely about corporate accounts and user data. Windsurf caught the first wave of enterprise adoption to agentic coding IDEs, and they have tons of big customers now.
- goopthink 1y ago
  No disagreement, I think developer augmentation is an amazing productization of LLMs, and will likely be better at converting enterprises so paying customers. But OpenAI has the best brand recognition and the largest user base, and they have the core tech powering all of this. Whats the number on “tons” of customers, given that these VSCode-spinoff/plugin GPT wrappers are sprouting around like mushrooms after a rain? If this is a build-vs-buy decision, $3 billion? Is that worth 1/3rd of the money in the bank when they’re burning cash at insane rates just running servers, and the rest of the $30b fundraise is tenuous and there may not be a followup? I’m skeptical of the financial decision here.
  - ramesh31 1y ago
    OpenAI has massive B2C brand value, but their enterprise offerings are scant. The era of consumer chatbot AI is coming to a close, and the winner will be the one who captures the B2B mindshare for real applications. It’s about buying time as well. Could they put out a competitive product in less than six months? Maybe, but even that would leave them light years behind the market by the time it was ready.
- Terretta 1y ago
  Interesting since OpenAI and Anthropic both still mostly refuse to talk to anyone with "corporate" (information security, AAA, audit log) needs for under 150 seats even if they're willing to pay.
  - mycall 1y ago
    Microsoft, Oracle, Goole and the like are happy to handle corporate seats.
conartist6 1y ago
I don't think there's anyone better positioned to answer your question than I am, given that I've spent the last 3 years building the IDE tech that OpenAI really wants and needs right now (though they don't yet know it). The problem is that what you're discussing is a political undertaking. I don't mean that it's "left versus right" political, I mean that the primary task that makes it hard is getting a lot of human beings to agree on some low-level details about how the gory internals of an IDE work. LLMs can produce text, but they have no will to political organization. They aren't going to accomplish a task by going out and trying align the needs of many individuals in a compromise that requires determined work to find out what those people really want and need, which is the only way to get this particular task done. Somehow the natural-language-as-API idea has made many people think that in the future APIs and formal technical standards will be unnecessary, something for which I do not see evidence. There's a second problem too, one of alignment: LLMs encourage you to give away the work of coding. I would not for anything give away the pain of using mediocre tools like VSCode to write a lot of code myself, because what I learn as the intelligence doing the work is what I need to know to be able to make tools for doing that work more efficiently. I use my learnings to design protocols, data structures, libraries, frameworks, and programming languages which don't just *mask* the underlying pain of software development but which can reduce it greatly.
- conartist6 1y ago
  And the next link I click captures it perfectly: https://blog.ollien.com/posts/llm-friction/ https://blog.ollien.com/posts/llm-friction/ To quote Ollien: > Even as an “LLM-skeptic”, it would be silly for me to say that the tools are useless for software development. There are clearly times where they can be useful, whether that’s to perform a refactoring too complicated for IDE tooling, or to get a proof-of-concept put together. With that said, in my time both using and watching others use LLMs, I have noticed a troubling trend: they help reduce friction when developing software – friction that can help us to better understand and improve the systems we work on. It's quite funny to me that in the case I'm talking about, "a refactor that's too complicated for IDE tooling" is exactly the kind of friction that needs to be felt
  - 1y ago
siva7 1y ago
Vibe coding with what? o4-mini? 4.1? Their coding models are a joke and their agent coder product as well. They would have to use claude
- cdelsolar 1y ago
  I find 4.1 superior to Claude in my few adventures into vibe coding.
  - siva7 1y ago
    Which tool do you use?
    - cdelsolar 1y ago
      Cline
- jononor 1y ago
  There seems to be no stable consensus on which LLM one should have used, to get good results. Which is somewhat natural, things are moving quickly - and evaluation methods are immature (and the little we have, actively gamed). But a lot of the arguments seem on the surface to be of "No true Scotchman AI" form. Or "you are just holding it wrong" (ref Apple).
rvz 1y ago
> Why couldn’t OpenAI vibe code their own Windsurf/Cursor competitor? (Serious question). Because an IDE has to be tested to work and function correctly. Not "Vibe coded". Vibe-coding is not software engineering. It is better to build than to buy.
ZeroTalent 1y ago
Cash is cheap. $3B isn't that much in the grand scheme of things for OpenAI and, allegedly, 1M users.
lozenge 1y ago
Why would OpenAI vibe code anything? They have hundreds of experienced software engineers. Vibe coding is meant to replace an intern, not your actual team. They don't want to get into specific industries (AI for software development, AI for business process management, AI for knowledge workers). They just do the AI component. Maybe that's changing now, but they still let other people take the risks - you know, people who are passionate about coding. Then when the product is proven, they might acquire it.
- lumost 1y ago
  My honest take? Vibe coding makes a senior engineer 2-4x more productive depending on the project. Very large projects see diminishing returns down to 0% productivity gain or negative. I can probably supervise 10 concurrent vibe coding sessions with a little thought on how to structure the tasks and code. This is like giving each of your top engineers their own staff. The AI coders are different from human coders in what they can and can’t do, they are both profoundly dumb - and extremely technically proficient *at the same time*.
  - __loam 1y ago
    Insane take. 2-4x productive until you have to refactor or fix anything and realize you just created a 10,000 line steaming pile.
    - monkeycantype 1y ago
      I disagree with this negative take. I can use Claude to quickly explore libraries, I’m not familiar with, and have developed a development process where I describe the purpose of each class and method in a markdown file , and have Claude, Gemini, deep seek and Chat all pitch descriptions of how to implement it in shared markdown files. I correct their misconceptions and inefficiencies before any code is written, I can write this code myself, but I’m finding I can work faster like this.
      - __loam 1y ago
aaron695 1y ago
[dead]

1zael 1y ago

They are just too focused on more important problems to solve, primarily around model improvement and getting to AGI.

echan00 1y ago

They could. They prob need talent though, considering how much fish they're frying

ivanbalepin 1y ago

it still takes time to spec out, build and sell to a comparable size user base, even with 10 people. And you're not guaranteed the same results if you just try to clone all of that. If the price is right, why not take the shortcut.

goopthink 1y ago
Is $3 billion the right price? That might be what Windsurf is being valued at (cue the “selling to willing buyers at currently fair market prices” meme), but that’s like saying “it would cost OpenAI more than $3b to staff from zero, build a competitor, and acquire a comparable volume of paying users” … and that feels like an insane statement given the implications therein? Especially given that Windsurf (and I think Cursor too) is a VSCode fork and OpenAI is cozy enough with Microsoft? It’s not even a zero to one build.
- ivanbalepin 1y ago
  if they are optimizing for cost, which they are obviously not, then of course it would take them less to build. If they are optimizing for time, and the actual aforementioned "vibe code" step may not even be the most time-consuming part, then yes, it may be the right price.

fullstackwife 1y ago

Anyone can vibe code their own Windsurf/Cursor alternative, and adjust it accordingly to their needs. You don't need majority of the features, most of them are developed because of the usual "large enterprise customer wants a feature" mantra. The real value comes from the underlying model anyway. This looks more like a short term tactical move, and the goal is to improve their "API usage" KPIs, because compared to Gemini/Claude it looks not good. (majority of traffic are chatgpt.com free users)

LZ_Khan 1y ago

Well I assume that's what Anthropic and Google are doing with Claude Code and Firebase Studio. The main thing is marketing and userbase, which shouldn't be underestimated.

ramesh31 1y ago

They couldn’t care less about the tech. This was entirely about corporate accounts and user data. Windsurf caught the first wave of enterprise adoption to agentic coding IDEs, and they have tons of big customers now.

goopthink 1y ago
No disagreement, I think developer augmentation is an amazing productization of LLMs, and will likely be better at converting enterprises so paying customers. But OpenAI has the best brand recognition and the largest user base, and they have the core tech powering all of this. Whats the number on “tons” of customers, given that these VSCode-spinoff/plugin GPT wrappers are sprouting around like mushrooms after a rain? If this is a build-vs-buy decision, $3 billion? Is that worth 1/3rd of the money in the bank when they’re burning cash at insane rates just running servers, and the rest of the $30b fundraise is tenuous and there may not be a followup? I’m skeptical of the financial decision here.
- ramesh31 1y ago
  OpenAI has massive B2C brand value, but their enterprise offerings are scant. The era of consumer chatbot AI is coming to a close, and the winner will be the one who captures the B2B mindshare for real applications. It’s about buying time as well. Could they put out a competitive product in less than six months? Maybe, but even that would leave them light years behind the market by the time it was ready.
Terretta 1y ago
Interesting since OpenAI and Anthropic both still mostly refuse to talk to anyone with "corporate" (information security, AAA, audit log) needs for under 150 seats even if they're willing to pay.
- mycall 1y ago
  Microsoft, Oracle, Goole and the like are happy to handle corporate seats.

conartist6 1y ago

I don't think there's anyone better positioned to answer your question than I am, given that I've spent the last 3 years building the IDE tech that OpenAI really wants and needs right now (though they don't yet know it). The problem is that what you're discussing is a political undertaking. I don't mean that it's "left versus right" political, I mean that the primary task that makes it hard is getting a lot of human beings to agree on some low-level details about how the gory internals of an IDE work. LLMs can produce text, but they have no will to political organization. They aren't going to accomplish a task by going out and trying align the needs of many individuals in a compromise that requires determined work to find out what those people really want and need, which is the only way to get this particular task done. Somehow the natural-language-as-API idea has made many people think that in the future APIs and formal technical standards will be unnecessary, something for which I do not see evidence. There's a second problem too, one of alignment: LLMs encourage you to give away the work of coding. I would not for anything give away the pain of using mediocre tools like VSCode to write a lot of code myself, because what I learn as the intelligence doing the work is what I need to know to be able to make tools for doing that work more efficiently. I use my learnings to design protocols, data structures, libraries, frameworks, and programming languages which don't just *mask* the underlying pain of software development but which can reduce it greatly.

conartist6 1y ago
And the next link I click captures it perfectly: https://blog.ollien.com/posts/llm-friction/ https://blog.ollien.com/posts/llm-friction/ To quote Ollien: > Even as an “LLM-skeptic”, it would be silly for me to say that the tools are useless for software development. There are clearly times where they can be useful, whether that’s to perform a refactoring too complicated for IDE tooling, or to get a proof-of-concept put together. With that said, in my time both using and watching others use LLMs, I have noticed a troubling trend: they help reduce friction when developing software – friction that can help us to better understand and improve the systems we work on. It's quite funny to me that in the case I'm talking about, "a refactor that's too complicated for IDE tooling" is exactly the kind of friction that needs to be felt
- 1y ago

siva7 1y ago

Vibe coding with what? o4-mini? 4.1? Their coding models are a joke and their agent coder product as well. They would have to use claude

cdelsolar 1y ago
I find 4.1 superior to Claude in my few adventures into vibe coding.
- siva7 1y ago
  Which tool do you use?
  - cdelsolar 1y ago
    Cline
jononor 1y ago
There seems to be no stable consensus on which LLM one should have used, to get good results. Which is somewhat natural, things are moving quickly - and evaluation methods are immature (and the little we have, actively gamed). But a lot of the arguments seem on the surface to be of "No true Scotchman AI" form. Or "you are just holding it wrong" (ref Apple).

rvz 1y ago

> Why couldn’t OpenAI vibe code their own Windsurf/Cursor competitor? (Serious question). Because an IDE has to be tested to work and function correctly. Not "Vibe coded". Vibe-coding is not software engineering. It is better to build than to buy.

ZeroTalent 1y ago

Cash is cheap. $3B isn't that much in the grand scheme of things for OpenAI and, allegedly, 1M users.

lozenge 1y ago

Why would OpenAI vibe code anything? They have hundreds of experienced software engineers. Vibe coding is meant to replace an intern, not your actual team. They don't want to get into specific industries (AI for software development, AI for business process management, AI for knowledge workers). They just do the AI component. Maybe that's changing now, but they still let other people take the risks - you know, people who are passionate about coding. Then when the product is proven, they might acquire it.

lumost 1y ago
My honest take? Vibe coding makes a senior engineer 2-4x more productive depending on the project. Very large projects see diminishing returns down to 0% productivity gain or negative. I can probably supervise 10 concurrent vibe coding sessions with a little thought on how to structure the tasks and code. This is like giving each of your top engineers their own staff. The AI coders are different from human coders in what they can and can’t do, they are both profoundly dumb - and extremely technically proficient *at the same time*.
- __loam 1y ago
  Insane take. 2-4x productive until you have to refactor or fix anything and realize you just created a 10,000 line steaming pile.
  - monkeycantype 1y ago
    I disagree with this negative take. I can use Claude to quickly explore libraries, I’m not familiar with, and have developed a development process where I describe the purpose of each class and method in a markdown file , and have Claude, Gemini, deep seek and Chat all pitch descriptions of how to implement it in shared markdown files. I correct their misconceptions and inefficiencies before any code is written, I can write this code myself, but I’m finding I can work faster like this.
    - __loam 1y ago

aaron695 1y ago

[dead]