“My 8-year-old daughter built a chatbot in 45 minutes using Cursor,” shared Ricky Robinett, deputy CEO of Cloudflare.
Source:X
In a video that went viral on the cognition.
Cursor is an artificial intelligence programming assistant developed by startup Anysphere. Although the AI programming track is already crowded, Anysphere still received US$60 million (approximately NT$1.9 billion) in investment led by a16z and Thrive Capital in August. A A round of fundraising, OpenAI Startup Fund, Dropbox founder Arash Ferdowsi and other well-known figures in the technology industry also participated.
"Our mission is to create a magical tool that one day will write all the code in the world." Michael Truell, CEO of Anysphere, said ambitiously.
The ambitions are ambitious, and Cursor’s current results prove that these are more than just words.
From university dormitory to OpenAI investment, Anysphere’s entrepreneurial journey
The seeds of Cursor were sown on November 18, 2015, when Microsoft launched the compiler "Visual Studio Code-OSS" (VS Code). This project quickly attracted widespread attention and became one of the most popular development tools in the world. .
Image source: Medium official website Anysphere team members: Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark and Aman Sanger
Four MIT students saw the opportunity to use artificial intelligence to change software development and formed Anysphere to participate in the project. Members include Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark and Aman Sanger. They proposed the idea of building a "magic tool". I hope to redefine the way of writing programs.
From dormitories to raising seed funding, Anysphere’s early journey can be said to be full of obstacles. It was not until 2021 that they received investment from Neo Scholars to continue research and development.
In 2022, Anysphere was officially established and successfully received a US$11 million (approximately NT$300 million) seed round of financing led by the OpenAI Startup Fund. Arash Ferdowsi, the founder of Dropbox, and other well-known figures in the technology industry also participated in this round of financing. This critical funding allowed the team to rapidly develop prototypes and improve Cursor’s core features, including intelligent code completion, debugging assistance, and natural language commands, which set Cursor apart from the fierce competition in the market.
In 2023, Cursor was officially released, and developers were attracted by its AI capabilities, especially the ability to generate complete functions from simple English prompts. This feature means that the efficiency of writing programs can be greatly improved. Cursor’s rapid adoption and innovative features have also caught the attention of tech venture capital investors.
In August 2024, Anysphere successfully received US$60 million (approximately NT$1.9 billion) in Series A funding led by a16z and Thrive Capital. The investor list includes Jeff Dean of Google, John Schulman and Noam Brown of OpenAI, and The founders of Stripe and GitHub, among others. The investment pushed the company's valuation to US$400 million (approximately NT$12.8 billion).
Programming tool Cursor: Eliminate the "deadlock" of software development
“Little by little,” writes Anysphere, “the ‘hassle’ of building and changing software is being replaced by lightness and control.” Cursor’s promise is to eliminate the deadlock in software development by providing instant answers, Intelligent code rewriting and error detection simplify the process of writing programs, with the ultimate goal of changing the way software is written.
Cursor also allows developers to enter requirements directly into the chat box and have the complete code automatically generated. Cursor uses well-known AI models including GPT-4o, Claude3.5Sonnet, and the custom model Cursor-small, and supports the complete VS Code plug-in ecosystem to quickly complete simple tasks.
At first glance, Cursor AI’s capabilities appear to be achievable with tools like ChatGPT and Claude. However, the biggest advantage of Cursor AI is that it runs directly in Visual Studio Code, which is used by most software engineers. Unlike tools such as GitHub Copilot, Cursor's interface is half used for writing programs and half is an AI chatbot. It is like an accompanying program assistant, eliminating the time of communicating with AI across platforms.
Cursor AI’s goal is not to replace engineers’ jobs. The team stated that it hopes to automate tedious simple tasks through AI, allowing engineers to focus more on the creative work of developing high-level code.
Source: Cursor official website
Since its launch in 2024, Cursor has attracted more than 30,000 loyal users. According to Forbes, top engineers from AI startups such as OpenAI, AI drawing tool Midjourney, and AI search engine Perplexity have also become one of Cursor AI’s paying customers.
In terms of pricing, Cursor AI provides a two-week free trial, and paid memberships are divided into professional version (Pro) and business version (Business). The professional version includes unlimited editing suggestions, 500 fast AI conversations per month, unlimited slow AI conversations, unlimited use of Cursor-small, and 10 Claude Opus usage opportunities per day; the business version provides additional centralized computing based on the above functions. Services such as fees, management dashboard, privacy mode, and not allowing AI to store information.
Not just a plug-in or assistant, but a dedicated AI programming artifact
AI programming is very popular. For example, Microsoft's GitHub Copilot has gained millions of paying users. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emphasized: "Copilot is already bigger than GitHub when Microsoft acquired it." Some reports estimate that when Microsoft acquired it, When GitHub was acquired for US$7.5 billion (approximately NT$240.7 billion), GitHub's revenue reached US$300 million (approximately NT$9.6 billion).
Image source: Forbes official website Anysphere team members: Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark and Aman Sanger
Despite the fierce competition, Anysphere believes that Cursor is differentiated from other AI coding tools, pointing out that Cursor is a dedicated AI-enhanced code editor, not just a plug-in or assistant, which enables it to compete with other AI programming tools in the field. New startups and technology giants compete effectively.
Anysphere plans to use the recent funding to further improve Cursor’s AI capabilities, expand the team, and work to create a truly “AI native” programming environment. As Cursor continues to evolve, it is expected to play a key role in shaping the future of programming, making software development easier and more efficient for developers of all experience levels.
[Disclaimer] There are risks in the market, so investment needs to be cautious. This article does not constitute investment advice, and users should consider whether any opinions, views or conclusions contained in this article are appropriate for their particular circumstances. Invest accordingly and do so at your own risk.
This article is reprinted with permission from: "Entrepreneurship Meet"
Original author: You Haoqing
Original title: "Let 8-year-old girls know how to write programs. What is the AI artifact Cursor invested by OpenAI and a16z?" 》
