OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, said on the 19th (local time) that it acquired Astral, a startup that makes Python tools for developers, to strengthen its artificial intelligence (AI) coding capabilities.
Astral's tools are used for the stages before and after full-scale coding, such as managing development environments, checking rules, and finding errors. OpenAI plans to integrate these tools into Codex, its coding-specialized model. The acquisition will be completed after approval from regulators, and related financial terms, including the size of the transaction, were not disclosed.
OpenAI's acquisition of Astral is part of its strategy to expand enterprise customers. OpenAI is bolstering its coding features to stop its "octopus-like" expansion of business lines and target the more profitable enterprise AI market. As competitor Anthropic rapidly catches up with OpenAI centered on enterprise clients, the company is reorganizing its business structure in response. As part of that, since late last year it has acquired AI startups in succession, including Promptfoo, Software Applications, and Neptune.
According to OpenAI, Codex's weekly active users (WAU) recently surpassed 2 million. The company said users have tripled and usage has increased fivefold so far this year.
The market expects competition to intensify in developing AI coding tools dedicated to enterprise customers.
Countering OpenAI's offensive, Cursor, an emerging powerhouse in AI-based coding, unveiled the AI agent model "Composer 2." Composer 2 is a model that performs complex coding tasks of hundreds of steps on behalf of users, splitting assignments into hundreds of detailed steps and proceeding through them in order. Cursor emphasized that the new model has lower expense than similar models from OpenAI and Anthropic, delivers above-average coding performance, and is the fastest in speed.
According to Bloomberg, Cursor is in talks to raise new funding targeting a corporate valuation of $50 billion (about 67 trillion won).