Anthropic privately framed its Claude Code terminal tool as a low-priority research effort when speaking with Cursor, even as the coding startup funneled 40-50 percent of Anthropic's revenue through heavy model usage during those same early years.
Anthropic told Cursor that Claude Code was just a 'research effort' BRUH
NEW: Inside Cursor's wild rise. Lots of great new details:
• CEO Michael Truell didn't pay himself for years
• Cursor once made up 40-50% of Anthropic's revenue
• Anthropic told Cursor that Claude Code was just a 'research effort' (lol)
• Cursor's unpaid "work trials"
The AI coding startup sent nearly all its revenue to Anthropic for compute while its own CEO drew no salary, creating a tight but temporary dependence that both sides later navigated as product ambitions diverged.
Claude Code moved from the described research stage into public preview and then wider release, prompting some Cursor users to test direct alternatives and raising questions about how the two tools will coexist going forward.
Many users criticized Anthropic for labeling Claude Code mere research despite Cursor generating up to half its revenue, viewing the framing as a dishonest corporate bluff.
Holy, in its early days, Cursor accounted for roughly 40% to 50% of Anthropic's revenue. And Claude Code was just a reserach project.
How quickly everything has changed.
NEW: Inside Cursor's wild rise. Lots of great new details:
• CEO Michael Truell didn't pay himself for years
• Cursor once made up 40-50% of Anthropic's revenue
• Anthropic told Cursor that Claude Code was just a 'research effort' (lol)
• Cursor's unpaid "work trials"
Reminder, one week after the first "research" release preview.
Anthropic told Cursor that Claude Code was just a 'research effort' BRUH
@zephyr_z9 yeah, the manhattan project lmfao
@zephyr_z9 because it was a research effort? boris said they talked about keeping it internal only cause they thought they had special sauce initially lol
@zephyr_z9 My strategy analysis📈
🔽 As follows
@zephyr_z9 @yacineMTB It was, that’s why Boris left…for Cursor lol…but back within a week.
@kimmonismus Straight up, this is more proof that the labs got caught with their pants down. They were too busy playing safety cult to see a better product eating their lunch. Now they're scrambling to compete with the thing that was funding them. Classic.
@zephyr_z9 My strategy analysis📈
🔽 As follows
@zephyr_z9 That’s the main reason Cursor developed their own model and gain independence from Anthropic. We can expect for OpenAI and Anthropic to launch many more research projects in the future. They need to move up the stack in order to capture more revenue and not turn into a commodity.
@zephyr_z9 maybe not consistently candid
@zephyr_z9 if cursor thought anthropic + openai wasn't going to try to eat their lunch especially when they were barely more than an API wrapper they deserved to get jugged out of their money
@zephyr_z9 Not consistently candid in their communications...
@zephyr_z9 I mean wasn’t this also what ChatGPT was initially, a “research effort”?
@zephyr_z9 Wait, that research effort already outcodes my actual production code.
@zephyr_z9 they are still researching lmao
@viggy_krishnan @zephyr_z9 This is very bullish, Viggy
@zephyr_z9 Do they clone Vitaliks or something?
@zephyr_z9 lmao same recipe with figma
@zephyr_z9 Whole company is a research effort
@zephyr_z9 lol they did the same thing just now with Claude design and figma