Anysphere, the maker of AI coding assistant Cursor, has raised million at a billion valuation, Bloomberg reported. The round was led by returning investor Thrive Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and DST Global. The massive round is Anysphere’s third fundraise in less than a year. The 3-year-old startup secured its previous capital haul of million at a pre-money valuation of billion late last year, as TechCrunch was first to report.  AI coding assistants, often referred to as “vibe coders,” have emerged as one of AI’s most popular applications, with Cursor leading the category. Anysphere’s annualized revenuehas been doubling approximately every two months, a person familiar with the company told TechCrunch. The company has surpassed million in ARR, sources told Bloomberg, a 60% increase from the million we reported in mid-April. Cursor offers developers tiered pricing. After a two-week free trial, the company converts users into paying customers, who can opt for either a Pro offering or a monthly business subscription. Until recently, the majority of the company’s revenue came from individual user subscriptions, Bloomberg reported. However, Anysphere is now offering enterprise licenses, allowing companies to purchase the application for their teams at a higher price point. Earlier this year, the company was approached by OpenAI and other potential buyers, but Anysphere turned down those offers. The ChatGPT maker bought Windsurf, another fast-growing AI assistant, reportedly for billion. #cursors #anysphere #nabs #99b #valuation

Back in December, Swedish tech entrepreneur Sebastian Siemiatkowski — the guy behind Klarna, the infamous burrito financing app — directed his family investment company to dump billion into AI startups.The investment made up a "mini portfolio" of four "prominent US-based AI companies," a press release said at the time. Those were software engineer startup Anysphere, generative AI language outfit Speak, bioresearch venture Chai Discovery — and a fourth, anonymous company.On its face, there's nothing out of the ordinary about that. AI startups nabbed almost half of all venture capitalist funds raised last year, according to Reuters, amounting to about billion.Anonymous startups are likewise pretty common, a tactic known as "stealth mode" made by founders who want to protect intellectual property or avoid media scrutiny until they're ready to announce their business.However, this "mini portfolio" earmarked a whopping 70 percent of its investment funds to the anonymous firm, or about billion. All anyone knew was that this was a "seed investment" toward the launch of a "new AI hardware product."Six months later, a post by Siemiatkowski is clearing some things up: the anonymous company was "io," another secret startup founded in 2024 by Jony Ive.Ive is the superstar British-American designer behind iconic Apple products like the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and Apple Watch, and even some not-so-renowned ones, like that weird hockey puck mouse, and a 90s chic toilet.But Ive isn't why it's weird.A day before Siemiatkowski's post, tech billionaire Sam Altman announced that OpenAI had acquired io in a bizarre dispatch that reads more like a wedding website than a corporate press release. OpenAI paid billion for io — meaning the Klarna King's secret investment in a little anonymous startup was now a public partnership with the biggest AI startup on the planet.Even stranger are some now-deleted posts by former Google designer Luke Wroblewski, who now spends his days as a director at Sutter Hill Ventures, a close-lipped titan in the tech funding space."Congrats to io on the B acquisition by OpenAI today," Wroblewski wrote, according to TechCrunch. "Happy to have been investors in this one."TC managed to nab a comment from Wroblewski's now-deleted post on X-formerly-Twitter, which suggests that Sutter Hill "was the second largest investor in 'io,'" an idea that Bloomberg seems to support.The question is, why delete? Is there some reason that Sutter Hill isn't actually happy to be have been investors? Is someone else involved in the deal trying to keep a lid on where the money's coming from? And most strikingly, why the silence? Sutter had nothing to tell TC after it reached out to ask, giving an unmistakably weird aura to the rollout.The drama comes as netizens and news media alike are abuzz with speculation about Sam Altman's secretive "AI companion" device, which he began teasing back in 2023.So far, Altman has told us the device will be "unobtrusive," "pocket sized," and "fully aware" of everything in its users' lives. It's probably not smart glasses, according to the Verge.Whatever it is, Sam Altman has an ambitious plan to roll out 100 million of them by 2026. Time will tell if it's worth all the secrecy and bluster — or if it turns out to be another Humane AI pin.Share This Article #something #weird #going #with #investors

OpenAI launched a research preview on Friday of what it’s calling its most capable AI coding agent yet. Codex, a cloud-based software engineering agent, can write features, answer questions about a codebase, fix bugs, and propose pull requests for review. Several tasks can run simultaneously, and users retain full access to their computers while the agent takes anywhere from one to 30 minutes to complete a task. Since it’s still in research preview, the tool remains in early development. The company said in a blog post that it “currently lacks features like image inputs for front-end work, and the ability to course-correct the agent while it’s working. Additionally, delegating to a remote agent takes longer than interactive editing, which can take some getting used to.” Over time, however, the company said using the service will feel more like asynchronous collaboration with colleagues. Codex is available to ChatGPT Pro, Enterprise, and Team subscribers. Users will have “generous access at no additional cost” for a few weeks, after which OpenAI plans to introduce pricing options and rate-limited access. Friday’s launch comes as part of a broader rise of AI tools for software engineers that are meant to handle repetitive, boring tasks rather than take over the whole gamut. “We imagine a future where developers drive the work they want to own and delegate the rest to agents—moving faster and being more productive with AI,” OpenAI said. Companies in the AI coding space are seeing massive revenues and high valuations. Anysphere, the startup behind coding platform Cursor, reportedly raised million at a billion valuation. Major tech companies are also racing to stake their claim. OpenAI competitor Anthropic released an agentic coding tool in February. In April, Google added new features to its AI coding agent, and Microsoft has been active in the space as well. In addition to Codex, OpenAI is reportedly in talks to acquire Windsurf, a maker of AI coding tools, for around billion—potentially its largest acquisition to date. Investor confidence in OpenAI appears strong. In March, the company announced it had raised billion at a billion post-money valuation, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world. #openai #launches #codex #agent #coding