AI firms are hyping up threat to coders to push their model sales
Anshul Ramachandran
, founding team member at artificial intelligence (AI) coding platform
Windsurf
, said he believes that the idea that AI will replace
software developers
is a narrative being overhyped by some AI founders and chief executives largely to push their model sales.
'My personal belief is that most of them wanted to fire a lot of people anyways, and AI is a very good excuse,' Ramachandran told ET in an exclusive interview. 'And then I think some of these folks leading model companies have some incentive as well—they're building models that are for software engineering. That's like very much a business tactic to sell more models.'
The California-headquartered
AI-assisted coding
platform, which was valued at $3 billion within a year of launch, is reportedly in talks for acquisition by
OpenAI
.
The company has seen India emerge as its second-largest market after the US, both in terms of developer adoption and enterprise partnerships, Ramachandran said.
'There are close to 17 million developers in India and there's very real energy for adopting the latest and greatest AI,' Ramachandran said. 'We're expanding our team there and actively thinking about building GPU clusters in India.'
He said the company is working with every leading IT company in India at various levels.
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Moreover, Indian IT companies are disrupting themselves faster than their international peers by using more AI, he said. But, he added, that only means a lot more software will now be created out of India because these companies have already made technology a differentiator.
Windsurf is also considering offering special pricing for a cost-sensitive market like India, Ramachandran said, particularly for enterprises.
'We've always provided a very generous free tier. And part of that rationale is, even in markets like India, we want to be able to democratise the technology,' he said.
While work in the future will be AI-assisted, humans will remain in the driver's seat, according to Ramachandran.
AI-based tools like Windsurf have the potential to reduce the number of people needed to do the same work, which could be viewed negatively, he said. 'It's actually been quite the opposite. People see it as an opportunity to have more business.'
He added that we will create ten times more software and, therefore, always need 'engineering 101' and investments in the workforce.
'That's where the counterintuitive part comes in, because every incremental hire you make now can actually create even more software than before,' he said.
On Windsurf's rapid growth, Ramachandran said the company was at 'the right place at the right time'.
'We chose a problem space that we understood that ended up being of great value,' he said. 'We were an infra company before we were even an AI company, so our background in GPU infra has absolutely helped us.'
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