5 ms·

But OpenAI already knows every single prompt sent to its models. They don't need to buy Windsurf for that.

Mtinie 1y ago
Now they also get to see what is sent to Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, etc., and what is returned. At scale, for a prime area of concern.
- bufferoverflow 1y ago
  Reread the comment I replied to. It has nothing to do with Anthropic or Google or DeepSeek.
  - Mtinie 1y ago
    Your comment only questioned why OpenAI cares about Windsurf from a first party perspective. I expanded the rationale for why the acquisition makes sense at a different level.
- r0b05 1y ago
  That's valuable user and competitor data actually.
NitpickLawyer 1y ago
There's much more to be gained if you also have the client side of those interaction. You can get signals from "accepted" completions/plans/etc, number of edits made to those completions, how users use context, what was passed in context from a code base, and so on. And that's just on their models. They'd also get (at the very least) signals on their direct competition, if not straight up prompts+completions as well.
mvkel 1y ago
That's a bit like saying having access to Google is as good as being Google. All they really see as a model provider is little fragments of the picture, like trying to reconstruct the Mona Lisa by knowing which paint swatches Leonardo used. In other words, they only saw whatever Windsurf sent as context with a "fix the bugs" prompt stapled to it. By owning Windsurf, they see the entire source code of what's being built, all the time, plus how the model is interacting with it. There's a massive amount of value in what happens client-side, and behind the scenes. The "director's cut" of context. Huge difference.
- pqtyw 1y ago
  So just put up together a comparable VS Code based AI IDE in a couple of months and bundle it together with the ChatGPT subscription? They'd get loads of users very fast..
  - sanxiyn 1y ago
    I think it is exactly this. There is no doubt whatsoever OpenAI can do this, but they decided not to. The reason, I think, is that they don't want to be a couple of months late. In other words, they spent $3B to save a couple of months.

Now they also get to see what is sent to Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, etc., and what is returned. At scale, for a prime area of concern.

bufferoverflow 1y ago
Reread the comment I replied to. It has nothing to do with Anthropic or Google or DeepSeek.
- Mtinie 1y ago
  Your comment only questioned why OpenAI cares about Windsurf from a first party perspective. I expanded the rationale for why the acquisition makes sense at a different level.
r0b05 1y ago
That's valuable user and competitor data actually.

NitpickLawyer 1y ago

There's much more to be gained if you also have the client side of those interaction. You can get signals from "accepted" completions/plans/etc, number of edits made to those completions, how users use context, what was passed in context from a code base, and so on. And that's just on their models. They'd also get (at the very least) signals on their direct competition, if not straight up prompts+completions as well.

mvkel 1y ago

That's a bit like saying having access to Google is as good as being Google. All they really see as a model provider is little fragments of the picture, like trying to reconstruct the Mona Lisa by knowing which paint swatches Leonardo used. In other words, they only saw whatever Windsurf sent as context with a "fix the bugs" prompt stapled to it. By owning Windsurf, they see the entire source code of what's being built, all the time, plus how the model is interacting with it. There's a massive amount of value in what happens client-side, and behind the scenes. The "director's cut" of context. Huge difference.

pqtyw 1y ago
So just put up together a comparable VS Code based AI IDE in a couple of months and bundle it together with the ChatGPT subscription? They'd get loads of users very fast..
- sanxiyn 1y ago
  I think it is exactly this. There is no doubt whatsoever OpenAI can do this, but they decided not to. The reason, I think, is that they don't want to be a couple of months late. In other words, they spent $3B to save a couple of months.