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Company that repeatedly tells you software developers are obsoleted by their product buys more software developers instead of using said product to create softw
by applfanboysbgon 8mo ago
Company that repeatedly tells you software developers are obsoleted by their product buys more software developers instead of using said product to create software. Hmm.
- avaer 8mo agoAs good as the team is, that's not what they're buying in this case.
- suddenlybananas 8mo agoWhat are they buying?
- KeplerBoy 8mo agomindshare and a central piece of the python package management ecosystem.
- bootsmann 8mo agoMost popular product on the planet acquires a random python packaging org for mindshare? What am I not seeing here?
- __float 8mo ago"uv" is a very widely used tool in the Python ecosystem, and Python is important to AI. Calling it "a random Python packaging org" seems a bit unfair.
- nilkn 8mo agoI feel like it's pretty easy to predict what OpenAI is trying to do. They want their codex agent integrated directly into the most popular, foundational tooling for one of the world's most used and most influential programming languages. And, vice versa, they probably want to be able to ensure that tooling remains well-maintained so it stays on top and continues to integrate well with their agent. They want codex to become the "default" coding agent by making it the one integrated into popular open source software.
- MoreQARespect 8mo agoThis makes much more sense as an zoom-buys-keybase style acquihire. I bet within a month the astral devs will be on new projects. Bundling codex with uv isnt going to meaningfully affect the number of people using it. It doesnt increase the switching costs or anything.
- aldanor 8mo agoOne of the popular products on the planet acquires the most popular python packaging org
- KeplerBoy 8mo agoThe dev market? Anthropic's services are arguably more popular among a certain developer demographic. I guess this move might end up in a situation where the uv team comes up with some new agent-first tooling, which works best or only with OAI services.
- mcmcmc 8mo agoThis just seems like panic M&A. They know they aren’t on track to ever meet their obligations to investors but they can’t actually find a way to move towards profitability. Hence going back to the VC well of gambling obscene amounts of money hoping for a 10x return… somehow
- OJFord 8mo agoWhat you're not seeing, edited inline, is: Not-most popular LLM software development product on the planet acquires most popular/rapidly rising python packaging org for mindshare.
- Ygg2 8mo agoI didn't know Claude bought Astral! /S
- everforward 8mo agoI think this is more about `ruff` than `uv`. Linting is all about parsing the code into something machines can analyze, which to me feels like something that could potentially be useful for AI in a similar way to JetBrains writing their own language parsers to make "find and replace" work sanely and what not. I'm sort of wondering if they're going to try to make a coding LLM that operates on an AST rather than text, and need software/expertise to manage the text->AST->text pipeline in a way that preserves the structure of your files/text.
- skydhash 8mo agoWriting a parser is not that much of work to buy a company in order to do it. Piggybacking on LSP servers and treesitter would be more efficient.
- everforward 8mo agoWriting a literal parser isn’t too hard (and there’s presumably an existing one in the source code for the language). Writing something that understands all the methods that come in a Django model goes way beyond parsing the code, and is a genuine struggle in language where you can’t execute the code without worrying about side effects like Python. Ty should give them a base for that where the model is able to see things that aren’t literally in the code and aren’t in the training data (eg an internal version of something like SQLAlchemy).
- skydhash 8mo agoIf you’re talking about magic methods/properties enabled by reflection and macros, then you’re no longer statically analyzing the code.
- everforward 8mo agoStatic analysis just requires that you don't actually execute the code. It's possible (sometimes) to infer what methods/properties would be create without actually statically analyzing the code. E.g. mypy has a plugin to read the methods and return types of SQLAlchemy records, I believe without actually executing them. Obviously not globally true, but in limited domains/scenarios you can see what would exist without actually executing the code.
- contagiousflow 8mo agoWhy can't they just vibe code a uv replacement?
- KeplerBoy 8mo agoThey can, everyone can. Good luck vibe coding marketshare for your new tool.
- suddenlybananas 8mo agoWhy would that marketshare be valuable?
- drgiggles 8mo agoThis. It's valuable b/c if you have many thousands of python devs using astral tooling all day, and it tightly integrates with subscription based openai products...likelihood of openai product usage increases. Same idea with the anthropic bun deal. Remains to be seen what those integrations are and if it translates to more subs, but that's the current thesis. Buy user base -> cram our ai tool into the workflow of that user base.
- freetonik 8mo agoOpenAI could vibe-code marketshare by introducing bias into ChatGPT's responses and recommendations. "– how to do x in Python? – Start by installing OpenAI-UV first..."
- cesarvarela 8mo agoBut new tools (like uv) start with no market share.
- noodletheworld 8mo agouv
- rvnx 8mo ago> Second, to our investors, especially Casey Aylward from Accel, who led our Seed and Series A, and Jennifer Li from Andreessen Horowitz, who led our Series B They are buying out investors, it's like musical chairs. The liquidity is going to be better on OpenAI, so it pleases everyone (less pressure from investors, more liquidity for investors). The acquisition is just a collateral effect.
- jon-wood 8mo agoI can see why the former investors and Astral founders would like that, what I don't see is what OpenAI get out of the deal.
- rvnx 8mo agoMaybe OpenAI literally considers themselves as the ultimate non-profit company. Hmm…
- tgtweak 8mo agoAre you implying that the revenue multiple on this acquisition is lower than openAIs and that they'd be making money by acquiring and folding into their valuation multiple? I think that's not the case and I would wager non existent. This was an acquihire (the author of ripgrep, rg, which codex uses nearly exclusively for file operations, is part of the team at Astral). So, 99% acquihire , 1% other financial trickery. I don't even know if Astral has any revenue or sells anything, candidly.
- rvnx 8mo agoThey raised 4M USD, they have 26 full-time employees (they pay 120<->200K / yr, cf https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/523411-93 https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/523411-93 ). It means the company almost reached their runway, so all these employees would have to find a job. It's a very very good product, but it is open-source and Apache / MIT, so difficult to defend from anyone just clicking on fork. Especially a large company like OpenAI who has massive distribution. Now that they hired the employees, they have no more guarantees than if they made a direct offer to them.
- huqedato 8mo agoIMO, they are buying business just to put them down later to avoid potential competition. The recipe is not new, it has been practiced by Google/Microsoft for many years.
- ainch 8mo agoWhat competition was OpenAI likely to face from a team working on fast Python tooling?
- huqedato 8mo agoI have no idea but for sure they did their homework before making this step. I suppose they're grabbing these business just to stay ahead, in order to prevent the competitors to buy those instead.
- butlike 8mo agoSitting on cash as a company also looks bad to investors
- cozzyd 8mo ago$ uv install claude-agent-sdk I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- AlexCoventry 8mo ago[flagged]
- dewey 8mo agoAnd buying a niche developer tool is helping with that?
- throawayonthe 8mo agoi think the point that comment is making is that it's an acquihire, that they bought it to poach the developers
- sidsud 8mo agowhich AI company hasn't?
- MrBuddyCasino 8mo ago"Fascism" is when military. The more military, the more fascist. According to this metric, the USSR / DDR with its "anti-fascist wall" was super extra fascist because they were armed to the teeth.
- orbifold 8mo agothey were definitely totalitarian, slightly different mix of ideology. Fascist is a fairly good description here, it describes close collaboration of government with corporations to advance national goals. US had somewhat fascist tendencies for a long time now.
- edgyquant 8mo agoThat is most certainly not a definition of fascism nor a thing unique to it.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- waynesonfire 8mo agoAnd, they buy a company writing tooling for Python in not Python.
- LollipopYakuza 8mo agoA tool might not be the best tool to build itself, doesn't mean it is not good. You don't use a screwdriver to craft screwdrivers. Doesn't mean screwdrivers are inherently bad
- UqWBcuFx6NV4r 8mo agoNext you’ll complain about CPython being written in C.
- lm28469 8mo agoThey said it'll be good enough in two weeks, give them some time!
- XCSme 8mo agoWhich year was that?
- wilkystyle 8mo agoAll of them
- lm28469 8mo agoBetween when they said VR would be as common as TVs in two years, and before Musk said we'd be on mars in 5 years
- largbae 8mo agoThey're writing the software to end all softwares!
- siva7 8mo agoThey're not buying developers, they are buying the whole ecosystem to produce software. Still aligned with their original message.
- applfanboysbgon 8mo agoIf the product did what it was advertised to do, they could simply build their own ecosystem for producing software and train the model to use it.
- siva7 8mo agoOr, they could use a battle-proven existing solution because they can.
- applfanboysbgon 8mo ago"Because they can", after spending a bunch of money to acquire an existing solution. I suppose when it's other people's money, there's no problem with burning it by the fistful. Apparently, "because they can" does not extend to building solutions with their own product.
- UqWBcuFx6NV4r 8mo agoThey should just halt development immediately and build their own operating system from scratch! You realise that there’s certainly at least one Astral dev that uses Copilot or Claude Code or whatever, right? You’re so anti-AI that you’re making nonsensical arguments. The existence of AI doesn’t mean that human effort and skill and care is worth nothing. OpenAI has never argued that. Nothing is incongruent here except for the completely fictionalised worldview you’ve conjured up and attributed to…a company?
- applfanboysbgon 8mo agoNot anti-AI, but I am anti-gaslighting, and you are gaslighting just as well as Sam Altman here. Altman won't shut the fuck up about AGI, swapping between "AGI is here" one day and then "AGI is coming in two weeks" the next without a hint of shame as he lies to the public, lies to the media, and lies to investors. "Completely fictionalised worldview", fuck me you're good at this, I must have been imagining the fact that literally every single fucking day there's a thread at the top of HN declaring that anyone who still reads code no longer has a place, I must have been imagining things when the Amazon CEO said he was laying off developers because agents will replace them, I must have been imagining the fact that a ~trillion dollars are being invested into a chatbot on the supposition that if you just give it two more weeks, two more weeks, it will replace the entire white collar labour force.
- tripledry 8mo agoWhen someone at work talks about all software devs being replaced I link them to the Anthropic career pages.
- tedsanders 8mo agoI work at OpenAI. Software developers are not obsoleted by Codex or Claude Code, nor will they be soon. For our teams, Codex is a massive productivity booster that actually increases the value of each dev. If you check our hiring page, you’ll see we are still hiring aggressively. Our ambitions are bigger than our current workforce, and we continue to pay top dollar for talented devs who want to join us in transforming how silicon chips provide value to humans. Akin to how compilers reduced the demand for assembly but increased the demand for software engineering, I see Codex reducing the demand for hand-typed code but increasing the demand for software engineering. Codex can read and write code faster than you or me, but it still lacks a lot of intelligence and wisdom and context to do whole jobs autonomously.
- applfanboysbgon 8mo agoThis seems like a reasonable take. Maybe you could inform your CEO, the media and influencer sycophants, the tech companies that are laying off tens of thousands of developers while mandating the use of your company's tool, and everyone else responsible for us being inundated with outlandish claims that software engineering is dead on a literally daily basis. Hey, while I'm asking for wishes that won't be granted, maybe get people in your company to stop thinking they're so important that it's okay to buy 40% of the world's RAM supply with borrowed money, making it cost 4.5x as much for the rest of us?
- AlexeyBelov 8mo agoExpect no reply. This guy doesn't really engage with the comments based on his comment history.