It’s getting clearer who the winners will be in key parts of the generative AI race, according to Elad Gil, a top startup investor.
“In coding, it seems like it’s consolidated into 2 or 3 players,” he said recently on my favorite AI podcast, “No Priors.”
He highlighted Cursor, Codium (now called Qodo), Cognition AI (the startup behind Devin), and Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot.
A clear sign of progress in the tech industry is when a giant platform decides to use an outside service rather than its own product. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others have thousands of engineers who can whip up new tech pretty well. So it’s a major signal when these companies decide that, no, their home-grown stuff may not be enough.
This is happening with Cursor, an AI coding tool from startup Anysphere. Amazon is working on making this available to its employees, according to a scoop this week from Business Insider’s Eugene Kim.
Amazon already has its own AI coding assistant, Q, and is developing a more advanced tool codenamed “Kiro.” So this is a notable move for a company that had warned employees about using third-party AI tools.
Google has its own internal AI coding tools, too. And yet, CEO Sundar Pichai said this week he’s been messing around with Cursor and a similar service called Replit, building a custom webpage for himself.
Software engineering is evolving from a specialized skill into something that non-technical folks can try. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang likes to say that everyone is a programmer now. Instead of learning complex coding languages, we can create digital things using plain English.
Still, some AI coding tools require more expertise than others. Cursor is an IDE, or integrated developer environment, a common setup for pro software engineers. Replit and another coding tool called Bolt.new work in a browser and are considered more user-friendly for novices.
Pichai made the distinction this week, saying he uses Cursor, and has “vibe coded with Replit.” Vibe coding is a hot new phrase for some of these easier-to-use tools. A good rule of thumb: If you didn’t know what IDE stands for, you probably aren’t ready for Cursor! Here are more tips.
