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Anaconda Raises $150M Series C
- blitzar 1y ago> This news comes on the heels of Anaconda’s newly launched AI Platform Ahh makes sense now.
- specproc 1y agoWhere's Anaconda at these days? I've not touched it since starting out with Python and don't think I've touched it since discovering other package managers. Anyone here using it regularly in 2025, is there anything I'm missing out on?
- zubiaur 1y agoEverywhere where they may be a shadow data science team. And that's how they get you. One has to be very careful to install the Open Source portions. They make no effort to make the boundary obvious. If one does not, IT will get a call asking for licensing money.
- gonzalohm 1y agoHow are they going to find out though?
- throwaway3646 1y agoBy checking IP, I'm guessing
- gonzalohm 1y agoI work from home and even if I didn't, how are they going to link an IP to a company
- zubiaur 1y agoThey have a form where they ask for an email before giving the download link. My guess is that + a bit of telemetry.
- throwaway3646 1y agoThis will also happen if you use condaforge, which can be downloaded freely. Condaforge will also download from the main channel if the recipe requires it.
- gonzalohm 1y agoYou can bypass that
- throwaway3646 1y agoCan confirm, this is exactly what happened. They demand ridiculous back payments unless you buy multiple-year licenses. It would be trivial for them to require an account to use the main channel, but they deliberately make it easy to accidentally use it. If you have to use it, make sure to DNS block anaconda.com (.org seems to be fine), but even better, just avoid them like the plague.
- MengerSponge 1y agoAnaconda sells a managed environment for data science applications, right? Basically the Red Hat business model? I've used conda for years and haven't set aside the day it'll take to switch to something simple and modern (uv's top of the list, but I'm open to suggestions)
- blitzar 1y agouse uv, you dont need to bin your existing installation (it just wont get used anymore) and it will take you 5 minutes to switch. next time you get new hardware you wont bother installing anything else python related.
- specproc 1y agoHeh, like I'm still holding on to pip. uv looks fab, really need to give it a go.
- esseph 1y agoJust add 'uv' in front of your pip commands, that's how it's called anyway
- myth_drannon 1y agoSetting up a python environment for ML work (pytorch + Nvidia) is simpler with Anaconda, it's a pure dependency nightmare doing it with something else.
- specproc 1y agoYeah, I remember finding that the case for a while. I can't remember when things clicked and it was fine without. I moved to arch a while back, perhaps then.
- SJC_Hacker 1y agoDocker
- Balinares 1y agoCounterpoint: conda is a constant, neverending source of pure dependency nightmares here, that consistently costs us a two-digit percentage of velocity. I'm glad it's working for you, but I really wouldn't generalize. Or recommend it to anyone getting into Python. Use uv, new people, for real.
- disgruntledphd2 1y agoTo be fair, both you and GP are correct. Conda is really really painful to maintain, and it's also much much better for python stuff that relies on native libraries (i.e. C/Fortran/Cuda). Like, I love uv but GDAL (to use a random recent example) is much easier to install and maintain with conda.
- lotsalaser 1y agoWait, is this anaconda python, my favorite python installation? Oh no, it's now an AI company? Is my favorite python installation going to get enshittified?
- scblock 1y agoThat happened last year, when they changed their license terms and started shaking people down for money. I wouldn't touch it. https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/anaconda_puts_the_squeeze_on/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/anaconda_puts_the_squ... https://licenseware.io/retrospective-on-anacondas-2024-licensing-changes-what-they-mean-and-smarter-alternatives/ https://licenseware.io/retrospective-on-anacondas-2024-licen... https://www.cdotrends.com/story/4173/anaconda-threatens-legal-action-over-licensing-terms https://www.cdotrends.com/story/4173/anaconda-threatens-lega... https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/intel-sued-copyright-infringement-over-ai-software-2024-08-09/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/intel-sued-copyrigh...
- lotsalaser 1y agoGood eye. I would not have noticed if the terms changed，even with all of those articles. Is there a good replacement?
- mritchie712 1y agouv.
- kitchi 1y agomicromamba + conda-forge does the job really well. All open source and community supported, and none of the licensing drama. In my experience uv (haven't tried astral) doesn't quite fill the same niche, especially if compiled packages from other languages are necessary for your workflow (libboost for example)
- Tarq0n 1y agoLast year is just when they started being honest about it. Before then they left their terms intentionally ambiguous, then shook people down anyway.
- ratelimitsteve 1y agoToday started with coffee and hopes for a new Jon Voight vehicle in theaters next summer. Now it's coffee and disappointment in yet another AI offering no one asked for.
- benreesman 1y agoGoing up against Astral in 2025 with conda's stack is feeding 150MM directly into a furnace.
- simpaticoder 1y agoAstral's uv is an impressive, ultra-fast Python package manager that’s rapidly clearing up the pip/virtualenv/poetry mess and setting a new bar for dx. However, Astral is a startup with an unclear path to monetization, whereas Anaconda is a mature company focused on enterprise AI/ML offerings and long-term customer relationships, with conda being just one part of their broader stack. It’s entirely plausible for Anaconda to adopt tools like uv. Comparing Astral and Anaconda directly overlooks their vastly different missions and scales—uv’s technical leap could help unify Python tooling, but Anaconda addresses a different problem.
- benreesman 1y agoI'm saying when you compare the resources that have gone in vs. the results that have come out the other side? Putting these two teams up against one another isn't even fair: its like pushing baby chicks into a pond full of Piranhha fish. It's not just a package manager: uv and ruff and tye are rapidly becoming an ecosystem. You think they don't have plans for Jupyter? Google was a tiny company without a monetization strategy. Yahoo being gigantic and "divetsified" just made them a tastier meal for a different breed of competition.
- blitzar 1y agoCongratulations to Astral (makers of uv). At these valuations you are now all billionaires. You have earned the commas and car doors that open like \__/.
- p1esk 1y agoWhat is their revenue?
- blitzar 1y agoThey're a pure pre revenue play.
- p1esk 1y agoDo you think Anaconda founders will ever become billionaires? If not, why would you expect it for Astral founders?
- blitzar 1y agoAnaconda just raised funds at a valuation of 1.5B so they are well on their way.
- zeebeeblebrox 1y ago[dead]
- mcintyre1994 1y agoUnfortunately they've made the mistake of calling their Python package manager a Python package manager, rather than the secret to advancing AI.
- cokeandpepsi 1y ago[dead]
- QuadrupleA 1y ago$50m more than Oxide Computer, a company actually building something, just raised. For what exactly? A free python distro, doing some vague AI pivot?
- gonzalohm 1y agoFor people asking who uses Anaconda nowadays. I work with less technical users and the problem with UV is that the installation instructions are slightly more complicated. For users that just want conda to download python + a bunch of packages and won't ever bother to create environments, anaconda will always be superior. Now, if UV bundles with a "default python version" with an installer, that may change things.
- insane_dreamer 1y agothe other use case is if your env requires compiled binaries, you can't do that with uv. i.e., the Intel MKL package is available on conda but not on pypi. We've also run into this with some cuda related packages.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- huntertwo 1y agoIs it just me or is trivial software getting overfunded? How does an AI skin on vscode or conda have a big enough moat for these crazy rounds?
- wrsh07 1y agoAnaconda makes less sense to me, but cursor does have revenue numbers. I haven't seen them so I'm not sure if they look good (we use API keys with cursor so I'm pretty sure they get pure saas margins from us) I would also venture to guess that cursor is a somewhat nontrivial modification to vscode at this point.
- resource_waste 1y ago150M from people who never used Anaconda... I cannot imagine using Anaconda with how many issues I had. Virtual Environments have been superior.
- insane_dreamer 1y agoother than having "AI" in the name, I didn't see anything about its "AI Platform" that's actually AI in a meaningful way
- disgruntledphd2 1y agoTo be fair, the easiest way to maintain dependencies for computing on GPUs is defintely conda. Anything else requires a bunch more manual toil.
- insane_dreamer 1y agoSure. We use conda in that way. But it doesn’t make anaconda an AI company
- disgruntledphd2 1y agoThey're closer than lots of other 'AI' companies.
- matrss 1y agoAnaconda != the conda ecosystem != Python Everyone who is comparing Anaconda and conda to Astral and uv is missing that the conda ecosystem is language-agnostic while uv is python specific. uv won't help you install gfortran, for example. It is not a replacement, unless you only do python (and use at most common non-python libraries that are available on PyPI). On the other hand you don't have to use anything associated with Anaconda to use the conda ecosystem. Alternative package managers like mamba and pixi rely on the conda-forge channel instead. Pixi in particular (https://pixi.sh/ https://pixi.sh/) is sort-of the uv for the conda ecosystem workflow-wise, and works pretty well if you want that.
- throwaway3646 1y agoIf you are in a commercial environment, I can only warn to think that using alternative conda clients will be safe. Condaforge for instance will happily download from the main channel if the recipe requires it. It's pretty hard to make sure this does not happen, best solution is to block access on a network level.
- matrss 1y agoDo you have an example for a package on conda-forge that actually does this? I can only find a vague announcement from 2021 that the "defaults channel is now dropped when building conda-forge packages", as well as statements that the conda-forge repositories are considered incompatible with the defaults channel and having both enabled is an unsupported configuration. Access is blocked on the network level anyway.
- legobmw99 1y agoThat can only happen if you as a user have the 'defaults' channel still configured as available, and conda-forge considers it a user error whenever this happens (the official line is `conda-forge is incompatible with the packages provided in defaults`). Many bug reports are closed simply by telling the user to fix their channel priorities and stop mixing the two
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- mcintyre1994 1y agoHeh, looks like they've just pivoted to calling what they do advancing AI and managed to mention AI enough times to get a big new valuation. Seriously, if you've ever used them before, check out their website now. "Advance AI with Clarity and Confidence", "Simplify, safeguard, and accelerate AI value with open source.", "Millions Rely on Anaconda to Advance Their AI Initiatives" What does any of that mean? No idea, seems like the actual product is the same conda.
- datadrivenangel 1y agoAnaconda has 150mm in annual recurring revenue? That's excellent news. It'll be interesting to see how this investment helps them grow.