Latest news with #JaredKaplan
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Anysphere launches a $200-a-month Cursor AI coding subscription
Anysphere launched a new $200-a-month subscription plan for its popular AI coding tool, Cursor, the company announced in a blog post on Monday. The new plan, Ultra, offers users 20x more usage on AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and xAI compared to the company's $20-a-month subscription plan, Pro. Anysphere also says Cursor users on the Ultra plan will get priority access to new features. Anysphere CEO Michael Truell said in a blog that the Ultra plan was made possible through multi-year partnerships with AI model providers. In the last several months, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind have similarly rolled out pricier subscription plans — ranging from $100-a-month to $250-a-month — as part of an effort to capitalize on their power users, and offer them increased usage. The new, pricy Cursor subscription plan seems poised to add revenue to Anysphere's already booming business. Earlier this month, Anysphere announced that Cursor had reached $500 million in annualized recurring revenue and is being used by major companies such as Nvidia, Uber, and Adobe. Anysphere was one of the fastest companies ever to reach $100 million in ARR, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down. Based on TechCrunch's previous reporting, Cursor's ARR has grown by $200 million since April. However, the race to develop 'vibecoding' tools is heating up, and many of the AI model providers Cursor relies on are developing their own AI coding products. OpenAI has reportedly acquired Cursor's competitor, Windsurf, to beef up its offerings of AI coding products. Meanwhile, Anthropic continues to develop Claude Code, its in-house AI coding tool that utilizes its popular AI models. It's unclear whether Anysphere can sustain this level of growth without bumping into AI model providers. We've seen more competitive tactics emerge in the AI coding space as these businesses have grown. For example, Anthropic recently slashed Windsurf's direct access to Claude AI models as a means to undercut its largest competitor, OpenAI. At the same time, Anysphere has started putting more resources towards developing its own AI models that work alongside models from OpenAI and Anthropic. In May, Anysphere rolled out a new 'Tab' AI model, which can suggest code changes across various files. In a recent interview with TechCrunch, Anthropic co-founder Jared Kaplan said he believed Anthropic would be working with Cursor for a long time. Anysphere's multi-year partnerships with Anthropic and other AI model providers certainly suggest these relationships aren't going anywhere just yet. Nonetheless, the competition for users is getting more intense. Sign in to access your portfolio
TechCrunch
09-06-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Anthropic's Jared Kaplan Charts the Course for Enterprise AI
Anthropic Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer Jared Kaplan joined TechCrunch Senior Reporter Maxwell Zeff at our TechCrunch Sessions: AI event to talk about the hottest topic within the AI community right now: agents. In Kaplan's view, chatbots are just the start, and agents will be the next frontier in expanding what AI can be capable of accomplishing. Kaplan also addressed a couple recent flashpoints with Anthropic, including the company rescinding some model access to the startup Windsurf, reportedly set to be acquired by OpenAI, as well as the company's stance against some of the Trump admin's recent AI policies.
The Verge
07-06-2025
- Business
- The Verge
Popular AI apps get caught in the crosshairs of Anthropic and OpenAI
Battlelines are being drawn between the major AI labs and the popular applications that rely on them. This week, both Anthropic and OpenAI took shots at two leading AI apps: Windsurf, one of the most popular vibe coding tools, and Granola, a buzzy AI app for taking meeting notes. 'With less than five days of notice, Anthropic decided to cut off nearly all of our first-party capacity to all Claude 3.x models,' Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan wrote on X this week, noting that 'we wanted to pay them for the full capacity.' An additional statement on Windsurf's website said: 'We are concerned that Anthropic's conduct will harm many in the industry, not just Windsurf.' Here, Mohan's company is collateral damage in Anthropic's rivalry with OpenAI, which has reportedly been in talks to acquire Windsurf for about $3 billion. The deal hasn't been confirmed, but even the spectre of it happening was enough for Anthropic to cut off one of the most popular apps that it powers. After a spokesperson told TechCrunch's Maxwell Zeff that Anthropic was 'prioritizing capacity for sustainable partnerships,' co-founder Jared Kaplan put it more bluntly. 'We really are just trying to enable our customers who are going to sustainably be working with us in the future,' Kaplan told Zeff. 'I think it would be odd for us to be selling Claude to OpenAI.'
TechCrunch
06-06-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Inside Anthropic's AI ambitions with Jared Kaplan
If you've been following Anthropic, you'll know it's been a busy year for the AI startup. Back in March, the company announced that it raised $3.5 billion at a $61.5 billion valuation in a round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Since then, it's launched a blog for its Claude models and, according to Bloomberg reporting, partnered with Apple to power a new 'vibe-coding' software platform. Instead of our usual Friday news rundown, today's episode of Equity brings you a conversation from this week's TechCrunch Sessions: AI event in Berkeley. Our friend and co-host Max Zeff sat down with Jared Kaplan, co-founder and chief science officer at Anthropic. Listen to the full conversation to hear more about: Who has direct access to Claude's AI models , Windsurf's response, and how it all ties into Anthropic's broader goals around openness, safety, and sustainability. , Windsurf's response, and how it all ties into Anthropic's broader goals around openness, safety, and sustainability. The company's pivot away from chatbots and toward agentic AI systems that can perform real tasks. How internal tools like Claude Code are shaping the future of AI-powered development. What it means to build AI that enterprises can actually trust, and how that affects the way humans interact with software, work, and each other.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Anthropic co-founder on cutting access to Windsurf: 'It would be odd for us to sell Claude to OpenAI'
Anthropic Co-founder and Chief Science Officer Jared Kaplan said his company cut Windsurf's direct access to Anthropic's Claude AI models largely because of rumors and reports that OpenAI, its largest competitor, is acquiring the AI coding assistant. "We really are just trying to enable our customers who are going to sustainably be working with us in the future," said Kaplan during an onstage interview Thursday with TechCrunch at TC Sessions: AI 2025. "I think it would be odd for us to be selling Claude to OpenAI," Kaplan said. The comment comes just a few weeks after Bloomberg reported that OpenAI was acquiring Windsurf for $3 billion. Earlier this week, Windsurf said that Anthropic cut its direct access to Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3.7 Sonnet, two of the more popular AI models for coding, forcing the startup to find third-party computing providers on relatively short notice. Windsurf said it was disappointed in Anthropic's decision and that it might cause short-term instability for users trying to access Claude via Windsurf. Windsurf declined to comment on Kaplan's remarks, and an OpenAI spokesperson did not immediately respond to TechCrunch's request. The companies have not confirmed the acquisition rumors. Part of the reason Anthropic cut Windsurf's access to Claude, according to Kaplan, is because the company is quite computing-constrained today. Anthropic would like to reserve its computing for what Kaplan characterized as "lasting partnerships." However, Kaplan said the company hopes to greatly increase the availability of models it can offer users and developers in the coming months. He added that Anthropic has just started to unlock capacity on a new computing cluster from its partner, Amazon, which he says is "really big and continues to scale." As Anthropic pulls away from Windsurf, Kaplan said he's collaborating with other customers building AI coding tools, such as Cursor — a company Kaplan said Anthropic expects to work with for a long time. Kaplan rejected the idea that Anthropic was in competition with companies like Cursor, which is developing its own AI models. Meanwhile, Kaplan says Anthropic is increasingly focused on developing its own agentic coding products, such as Claude Code, rather than AI chatbot experiences. While companies like OpenAI, Google, and Meta are competing for the most popular AI chatbot platform, Kaplan said the chatbot paradigm was limiting due to its static nature, and that AI agents would in the long run be much more helpful for users.
