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 stated his firm minimize Windsurf’s direct entry to Anthropic’s Claude AI fashions largely due to rumors and studies that OpenAI, its largest competitor, is buying the AI coding assistant.

“We actually are simply attempting to allow our prospects who’re going to sustainably be working with us sooner or later,” stated Kaplan throughout an onstage interview Thursday with Trendster at TC Periods: AI 2025.

“I feel it might be odd for us to be promoting Claude to OpenAI,” Kaplan stated.

The remark comes only a few weeks after Bloomberg reported that OpenAI was buying Windsurf for $3 billion. Earlier this week, Windsurf stated that Anthropic minimize its direct entry to Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3.7 Sonnet, two of the extra widespread AI fashions for coding, forcing the startup to search out third-party computing suppliers on comparatively quick discover. Windsurf stated it was disillusioned in Anthropic’s resolution and that it’d trigger short-term instability for customers attempting to entry Claude through Windsurf.

Windsurf declined to touch upon Kaplan’s remarks, and an OpenAI spokesperson didn’t instantly reply to Trendster’s request. The businesses haven’t confirmed the acquisition rumors.

A part of the explanation Anthropic minimize Windsurf’s entry to Claude, in line with Kaplan, is as a result of the corporate is sort of computing-constrained right this moment. Anthropic want to reserve its computing for what Kaplan characterised as “lasting partnerships.”

Nevertheless, Kaplan stated the corporate hopes to significantly enhance the supply of fashions it may supply customers and builders within the coming months. He added that Anthropic has simply began to unlock capability on a brand new computing cluster from its associate, Amazon, which he says is “actually massive and continues to scale.”

As Anthropic pulls away from Windsurf, Kaplan stated he’s collaborating with different prospects constructing AI coding instruments, similar to Cursor — an organization Kaplan stated Anthropic expects to work with for a very long time. Kaplan rejected the concept Anthropic was in competitors with corporations like Cursor, which is growing its personal AI fashions.

In the meantime, Kaplan says Anthropic is more and more targeted on growing its personal agentic coding merchandise, similar to Claude Code, slightly than AI chatbot experiences. Whereas corporations like OpenAI, Google, and Meta are competing for the most well-liked AI chatbot platform, Kaplan stated the chatbot paradigm was limiting as a consequence of its static nature, and that AI brokers would in the long term be far more useful for customers.