> But it seems plausible we’ll see similar "true costs greatly exceed our current subscription pricing" from Anthropic and OpenAI someday soon
Enterprise might stick around, but individually, I reckon the developers will flock to OpenCode + open weights (Qwen/GLM/Codestral). The problem then is, if the open weight models impress these new adopters, they will shout about it from rooftops (conferences, social media, blogs) in unison, which might result in an exodus. Especially troublesome considering developers are a major market for both frontier labs (Anthropic & OpenAI) & its IPO ambitions.
Despite their impressive ARR, Cursor faces existential threat from not only BigLabs (Claude Code, Open AI Codex) but also BigTech (AWS Kiro, Google Antigravity, MS VSCode). I am sure the usual suspects would have lined up to purchase Cursor, and the deal from xAI was probably the best of the lot. Marks an end to a remarkable sprint for a 3yo company, and an admirable exit (considering the recent discombobulation of Windsurf's), just as investor money and/or hype is going belly up.
Having tried most (all?) of the commercially available + open source options, and even tangential competitors like CC, Conductor, Antimetal, etc. I haven't found anything that's close to the experience of Cursor. The harness they've built is incredible.
I'd even go so far as to say that any competitors that are direct (windsurf, kiro, etc.) aren't even in the same universe. Cursor is just so much better, faster, has better features (plan and debug mode), and squeezes much better results/code out of the same models. They absolutely have some secrete sauce that the other options just don't have.
Cursor is my favorite of the VS forks. Agree that it delivers better plans than others. I prefer using Claude in Cursor over CC CLI when I am heads down going through bugs. I am disappointed in how "little value" in token use Cursor provides compared to others.
It has shown surprising stickiness. Occupying some middle ground between full adoption and still ~in the code.
I am starting to see some potential in moving back away from pure terminal, a mixed modality with AI. But it is not in the direction of IDE in any traditional sense.
> interested to see what Ternus' first few moves are
As it happens with most big corp c-suite transitions (see: Amazon), a lot of powerful executives will have to make way for the new CEO's chosen ones, and what those chosen few do (in lieu of asserting new found power) will dictate the short-term.
Johny is one of the most talented people I have ever had the privilege to work with. He has played a singular role in driving Apple's silicon strategy, and his influence has been felt deeply not just inside the company, but across the industry. He has always led his organization with remarkable deftness and judgment, and time and again, his team has delivered breakthrough innovations that have transformed our products. We are incredibly fortunate to have him as Apple's chief hardware officer.
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