Anysphere, the maker of AI coding assistant cursors, is growing so fast that it's not the market that's being sold, but a source close to Openai told TechCrunch.
It was a hot target. Cursor is one of the most popular AI-powered coding tools, and its revenues are growing astronomically. Another source shows that it doubles every two months on average. According to two sources, Anysphere's current average annual recurring revenue is around $300 million.
The company previously had moved away from discussions about an early acquisition with Openai after the ChatGpt maker approached the cursor. According to one of these sources, Anysphere has also received other acquisition offers that the company did not consider.
Cursor declined the offer because he hopes the startup remains independent, and the two say they are close to the company. Instead, Anysphere is in talks to raise capital at a valuation of around $10 billion last month.
Although it didn't win Anysphere, Openai did not give up on purchasing launches of established AI coding tools. Openai spoke to more than 20 other people, CNBC reported.
And last week, a $3 billion acquisition offer reported by Bloomberg, caused seriousness to Windsurf, the next fast-growing AI coding startup. Windsurf is a relatively small company, but its ARR is around $100 million, up from the ARR of $40 million in February.
Windsurf is also popular with the developer community, and its coding products are designed to work with Legacy Enterprise Systems. Windsurf did not respond to TechCrunch's request for comment. Openai declined to comment on its acquisition talks.
As competitors like Google's Gemini and China's Deepseek, they are priced for access to basic models, so Openai may be shopping as they are looking for the next area of growth.
Additionally, Anthropic and Google have recently released AI models that are better than Openai's models in their benchmarks, making them a preferred option for developers.
Openai can build its own AI coding assistant, but when you buy a product that is already popular with developers, it means that ChatGpt-Maker doesn't have to start from scratch to build this business.
VCs investing in developer tools startups certainly watch. Chris Farmer, SignalFire's Chris Farmer, told TechCrunch that Chris Farmer told the company TechCrunch, “They get it in the app tier. That's existential to them.”