OpenAI Pursued Cursor Creator Anysphere Prior to $3B Windsurf Deal Talks
As soon as the news of OpenAI buying AI coding company Windsurf for $3 billion came, a question definitely came to people’s mind – “Why did OpenAI not buy Anysphere, which makes Cursor?”
In fact, OpenAI has already invested in Anysphere. This company is the same one that makes the very fast-growing coding assistant Cursor. According to a CNBC report, OpenAI tried to buy Anysphere in 2024 and then earlier this year, but things did not work out.
A Bloomberg report suggests that Anysphere is currently in talks to raise new investment at a valuation of around $10 billion. On the other hand, Windsurf’s annual revenue is around $40 million, while Anysphere’s revenue from Cursor is said to be around $200 million.
This move by OpenAI clearly shows that it wants to establish its strong hold in the code generation market. Although OpenAI recently launched its Codex CLI Agent, which allows writing and editing code, the move to acquire Windsurf shows that the company wants to reach customers in this space as soon as possible — without waiting for its own tool to become popular.
