Why OpenAI wants Windsurf
Jan-Erik Asplund
TL;DR: OpenAI’s reported $3B bid for Windsurf underscores a shift from API monetization to vertically integrated full-stack products as labs race to own distribution, data, and usage. Sacra estimates that Windsurf reached $40M in ARR in February 2025, tripling from $12M at the end of 2024. For more, check out our full report and dataset on Windsurf.
Windsurf, launched out of the AI research company Codeium, is a VS Code–based development environment with agentic editing tools and chat-driven workflows that let developers write, refactor, and deploy code using natural language.
We first covered the vibe coding space in November 2024, as Cursor hit $65M ARR, and we followed up January 2025, when Windsurf was at $12M ARR and emerging as the key #2 to Cursor. In March, we followed up again as Windsurf tripled to $40M ARR.
Here’s our update with key points via Sacra AI:
- Windsurf is the #2 AI-native IDE at $40M ARR as of February 2025, roughly 5x smaller than Cursor, which hit $200M ARR in March 2025 after doubling from $100M at the end of 2024—OpenAI’s $3B offer for Windsurf values it at about 75x ARR vs. Cursor’s 50x forward, showing how aggressively it's moving to close the gap.
- Because both Cursor and Windsurf are built on VS Code, developers can switch between them instantly without changing workflows or extensions—making it easy for OpenAI to bundle Windsurf into ChatGPT Plus ($20/month) and Pro ($200/month), flip users, and rapidly grow share in the IDE market.
- Buying Windsurf jumpstarts OpenAI’s push into coding tools with an existing IDE that supports million-line codebases and streams 100B+ daily code-edit tokens—high-quality RLHF data that reduces its reliance on vendors like Scale and strengthens its position in coding alignment vs. Anthropic.
For more, check out this other research from our platform:
- Codeium (dataset)
- Vibe coding index
- Cursor at $200M ARR
- Cursor (dataset)
- Perplexity at $100M ARR
- $100M/yr Canva for talking head videos
- Cursor at $100M ARR
- Lovable at $17M ARR
- Bolt.new at $40M ARR
- Claude Code vs. Cursor
- Lovable vs Bolt.new vs Cursor
- Lovable (dataset)
- Bolt.new (dataset)
- Anthropic (dataset)
- OpenAI (dataset)
- Scale (dataset)
