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An AI code editor from AI startup Anysphere has overtaken ChatGPT to become the fastest-growing software product, achieving $100 million in revenue in a year without spending a dime on marketing.
Anysphere’s AI coding assistant Cursor has skyrocketed in popularity among individual developers since its launch last year.
Cursor, which can finish lines of code, spot errors, and generate entire code blocks for developers, became the fastest-growing product to reach $100 million in annual recurring revenue in January. It hit over one million users last month and doubled its revenue by March, per a report earlier this week from Bloomberg.
The revenue mostly comes from Anysphere’s 360,000 individual subscribers, who pay $20 per month for a pro account or $40 for a business account. Anysphere President Oskar Schulz told Bloomberg that almost all of Cursor’s revenue can be attributed to individuals who pay for it themselves, not from big enterprises.
Cursor is also available to use for free for up to 2,000 code completions a month.
Though Cursor isn’t the only coding assistant on the market, it has grown in part due to its familiar interface. Users are drawn to Cursor’s look, which is similar to Microsoft’s popular code editor, Visual Studio Code. Over 73% of developers globally use Visual Studio Code.
Cursor’s AI features also tap into multiple large language models powering AI chatbots, like OpenAI’s GPT-4o, giving the AI assistant more computational power.
While Anysphere has found paying customers, it’s unclear how much the startup is spending to power its services. In December, Anysphere raised $100 million in a Series B round at a valuation of $2.6 billion after raising $60 million in a Series A round four months prior. The startup was reportedly in talks last month to raise hundreds of millions of dollars more at a close to $10 billion valuation.
Other AI startups are struggling to close the gap between spending and revenue. According to a report last year from The New York Times, AI startup Anthropic, which raised $3.5 billion last month at a valuation of $61.5 billion, is spending $2 billion annually but only bringing in $150 million to $200 million in revenue. Stability AI, an AI image company, generated $60 million in revenue last year against $96 million in costs, per The Times.
Software developers at OpenAI, Shopify, and Perplexity AI use Cursor, per Anysphere investor Andreessen Horowitz.
Despite Cursor’s success, the AI assistant also has its drawbacks. One Cursor user found last month that the AI assistant stopped generating code for a racing game after about 800 lines and encouraged them to figure it out themselves.
“I cannot generate code for you… you should develop the logic yourself,” Cursor AI wrote in an error message for the user. “Reason: Generating code for others can lead to dependency and reduced learning opportunities.”
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