Anthropic has severed Windsurf's direct access to its powerful Claude AI models, a strategic move that comes amid strong indications that OpenAI is finalizing a $3 billion acquisition of the popular coding assistant.
"I think it would be odd for us to be selling Claude to OpenAI," Anthropic's Chief Science Officer Jared Kaplan stated during an onstage interview at TechCrunch's AI 2025 conference on June 5. His comment directly addressed the Bloomberg report from several weeks ago about OpenAI acquiring Windsurf for $3 billion.
The decision has cut Windsurf's direct access to Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3.7 Sonnet, two of the most popular AI models for coding. This has forced the startup to quickly secure alternative third-party computing providers, potentially causing short-term instability for users trying to access Claude through Windsurf's platform.
Kaplan emphasized that Anthropic is focusing on "lasting partnerships" and wants to enable "customers who are going to sustainably be working with us in the future." He specifically mentioned Cursor as a coding tool company Anthropic expects to maintain a long-term relationship with.
Meanwhile, Anthropic is increasingly focused on developing its own agentic coding products, such as Claude Code, rather than traditional AI chatbot experiences. Kaplan noted that the chatbot paradigm is limiting due to its static nature, and that AI agents would ultimately be more helpful for users in the long run.
Industry analysts suggest Anthropic's move is also about computing constraints and resource allocation. By pulling access, Anthropic appears to be blocking a future OpenAI-owned competitor from using Claude models and preventing data generated by Claude from ending up, directly or indirectly, inside OpenAI's ecosystem.
The AI-assisted coding sector, also known as "vibe coding," has heated up significantly in recent months. OpenAI reportedly closed on a deal to acquire Windsurf in April, though neither company has officially confirmed the acquisition. For vibe-coding startups, optionality is crucial as major AI companies like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic release new models every few months that outperform previous versions on coding tasks.