AI Coding Assistant Cursor Draws A Million New Users Without Even Trying

Many artificial intelligence startups are still struggling to find paying customers, but not Anysphere Inc., the maker of AI-powered coding assistant Cursor. Despite not having spent a single dollar on marketing, it’s become one of the fastest-growing startups of all time, not to mention part of the daily routine for software programmers at businesses ranging from deep tech companies like OpenAI to consumer brands such as Instacart, Spotify and Uber to organizations not generally associated with software, including Major League Baseball.Cursor is an AI-infused code editor that can analyze a programmer’s actions and suggest the next few lines. It also offers a chatbot that users can prod with code-related questions. Cursor is neither the only coding assistant available nor the first. But users have taken to its interface, which was built atop Microsoft Corp.’s popular code editor Visual Studio Code, and its support for a wide range of large language models, including its own and those of OpenAI and Anthropic. It just makes a thing that you do every day better and faster, says Anysphere President Oskar Schulz.In January, Anysphere hit $100 million in annual recurring revenue. By March, that had doubled, and more than a million people were using Cursor each day, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named while discussing private information. Cursor offers monthly subscription plans—$20 for a pro account for individuals or $40 for a business account. Nearly all of Cursor’s revenue still comes from individual users, says Schulz, many of whom work at companies that aren’t paying for it directly.This intense interest from coders shows how attention in the AI industry is shifting toward tools that can harness AI models, rather than just the models themselves. Anysphere’s founders—Michael Truell (now the company’s chief executive officer), Aman Sanger, Arvid Lunnemark and Sualeh Asif—started working on Cursor in 2022. Before they released the product the following year, GitHub made its own code editor, GitHub Copilot, broadly available. OpenAI also introduced ChatGPT, sparking a global frenzy that allowed Cursor to arrive just as companies, coders and consumers were primed to experiment with new AI tools.More on the growth of Cursor’s AI Coding on Bloomberg BusinessweekAgentic AI for the Enterprise | Inbound and Outbound AI Voice AgentsI’ve partnered with DBC Technologies and I am now consulting with companies who are interested in automating inbound and outbound messaging with AI Voice Agents.I’m interviewing DBC Technologies Founder and CEO Dennis Wilson today for an episode of the (A)bsolutely (I)ncredible Podcast - stay tuned it will be released soon.Web AI Chatbots, Inbound / Outbound AI Voice Agents, AI Marketing & ConsultingIf you are interested in AI Voice Agents for your business or organization message me.Thats all for today, but AI is moving fast - subscribe and follow for more Neural News. Get full access to Neural News Network at remunerationlabs.substack.com/subscribe