Anthropic Co-founder Discusses Cutting Windsurf’s Access to Claude Amid OpenAI Acquisition Rumors
Anthropic’s co-founder and Chief Science Officer, Jared Kaplan, addressed the decision to limit Windsurf’s direct access to Anthropic’s Claude AI models, citing rumors of a potential acquisition of the AI coding assistant by OpenAI, Anthropic’s primary competitor.
Speaking at TechCrunch Sessions: AI 2025, Kaplan stated, “We really are just trying to enable our customers who are going to sustainably be working with us in the future. I think it would be odd for us to be selling Claude to OpenAI.”
Kaplan’s comments follow a Bloomberg report indicating that OpenAI was in talks to acquire Windsurf for $3 billion. Earlier in the week, Windsurf reported that Anthropic had curtailed its direct access to Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3.7 Sonnet, which are widely used AI models for coding. This action has compelled Windsurf to seek alternative third-party computing resources swiftly. Windsurf expressed disappointment with Anthropic’s decision, anticipating potential disruptions for users accessing Claude through its platform.
Neither Windsurf nor OpenAI have officially commented on the acquisition rumors. An OpenAI spokesperson has yet to respond to TechCrunch’s request for clarification, and Windsurf has declined to comment on Kaplan’s statements.
Kaplan explained that Anthropic’s decision was partly driven by its current computing constraints. The company aims to allocate its computing resources to what he termed “lasting partnerships.” He added that Anthropic anticipates significantly increasing the availability of its models to users and developers in the coming months, as they have begun leveraging a substantial new computing cluster from their partner, Amazon, which is expected to continue scaling.
As Anthropic shifts away from Windsurf, Kaplan highlighted ongoing collaborations with other AI coding tool developers, such as Cursor. He emphasized that Anthropic views these relationships as long-term partnerships and does not consider them competitive, even when those companies are developing their own AI models.
Kaplan also noted Anthropic’s increasing focus on developing its own agentic coding products, exemplified by Claude Code, instead of traditional AI chatbot interfaces. While companies like OpenAI, Google, and Meta are vying for dominance in the AI chatbot arena, Kaplan suggested that the static nature of chatbots is limiting, and that AI agents will ultimately offer greater utility to users.
