Latest news with #MichaelTruell
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Cursor apologizes for unclear pricing changes that upset users
The CEO of Anysphere, the company behind the popular AI-powered coding environment Cursor, apologized Friday for a poorly communicated pricing change to its $20-per-month Pro plan. The changes resulted in some users complaining that they unexpectedly faced additional costs. 'We recognize that we didn't handle this pricing rollout well and we're sorry,' said Anysphere CEO Michael Truell in a blog post. 'Our communication was not clear enough and came as a surprise to many of you.' Truell is referring to a June 16 update to Cursor's Pro plan. Instead of Pro users getting 500 fast responses on advanced AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, and then unlimited responses at a slower rate, the company announced subscribers would now get $20 worth of usage per month, billed at API rates. The new plan allows users to run coding tasks in Cursor with their AI model of choice until they hit the $20 limit, and then users have to purchase additional credits to continue using it. However, Pro users took to social media to file their complaints in the weeks following the announcement. Many users said they ran out of requests in Cursor rather quickly under the new plan, in some cases after just a few prompts when using Anthropic's new Claude models, which are particularly popular for coding. Other users claimed they were unexpectedly charged additional costs, not fully understanding they'd be charged extra if they ran over the $20 usage limit and had not set a spend limit. In the new plan, only Cursor's 'auto mode,' which routes to AI models based on capacity, offers unlimited usage for Pro users. Anysphere says it plans to refund users that were unexpectedly charged, and aims to be more clear about pricing changes moving forward. The company declined TechCrunch's request for comment beyond the blog post. Truell notes in the blog that Anysphere changed Cursor's pricing because 'new models can spend more tokens per request on longer-horizon tasks' — meaning that some of the latest AI models have become more expensive, spending a lot of time and computational resources to complete complicated, multi-step tasks. Cursor was eating those costs under its old Pro plan, but now, it's passing them along to users. While many AI models have lowered in price, the cutting edge of performance continues to be expensive — in some cases, more pricey than ever. Anthropic's recently launched Claude Opus 4 model is $15 per million input tokens (roughly 750,000 words, longer than the entire 'Lord of The Rings' series) and $75 per million output tokens. That's even more costly than Google's launch of Gemini 2.5 Pro in April, which was its most expensive AI model ever. In recent months, OpenAI and Anthropic have also started charging enterprise customers for 'priority' access to AI models — an additional premium on top of what AI models already cost that guarantees reliable, high speed performance. These expenses may be filtering their way down to AI coding tools, which seem to be getting more expensive across the industry. Users of another popular AI tool, Replit, were also caught off guard in recent weeks by pricing changes that made completing large tasks with AI more expensive. Cursor has become one of the most successful AI products on the market, reaching more than $500 million in ARR largely through subscriptions to its Pro plan. However, Cursor now faces intense competition from the AI providers it relies on, while simultaneously figuring out how to affordably serve their more expensive AI models. Anthropic's recently launched AI coding tool Claude Code has been a hit with enterprises, reportedly boosting the company's ARR to $4 billion, and likely taking some users from Cursor in the process. Last week, Cursor returned the favor by recruiting two Anthropic employees that led product development of Claude Code. But if Cursor intends to keep its market-leading position, it can't stop working with the state-of-the-art model providers — at least, not until its own home-grown models are more reasonably competitive. So Anysphere recently struck multi-year deals with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI to offer a $200-a-month Cursor Ultra plan with very high rate limits. Anthropic co-founder Jared Kaplan also told TechCrunch in June he plans to work with Cursor for a long time. However, it certainly feels as if the pressure between Cursor and AI model developers is building.
TechCrunch
07-07-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Cursor apologizes for unclear pricing changes that upset users
The CEO of Anysphere, the company behind the popular AI-powered coding environment Cursor, apologized Friday for a poorly communicated pricing change to its $20-per-month Pro plan. The changes resulted in some users complaining that they unexpectedly faced additional costs. 'We recognize that we didn't handle this pricing rollout well and we're sorry,' said Anysphere CEO Michael Truell in a blog post. 'Our communication was not clear enough and came as a surprise to many of you.' Truell is referring to a June 16 update to Cursor's Pro plan. Instead of Pro users getting 500 fast responses on advanced AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, and then unlimited responses at a slower rate, the company announced subscribers would now get $20 worth of usage per month, billed at API rates. The new plan allows users to run coding tasks in Cursor with their AI model of choice until they hit the $20 limit, and then users have to purchase additional credits to continue using it. However, Pro users took to social media to file their complaints in the weeks following the announcement. Many users said they ran out of requests in Cursor rather quickly under the new plan, in some cases after just a few prompts when using Anthropic's new Claude models, which are particularly popular for coding. Other users claimed they were unexpectedly charged additional costs, not fully understanding they'd be charged extra if they ran over the $20 usage limit and had not set a spend limit. In the new plan, only Cursor's 'auto mode,' which routes to AI models based on capacity, offers unlimited usage for Pro users. Anysphere says it plans to refund users that were unexpectedly charged, and aims to be more clear about pricing changes moving forward. The company declined TechCrunch's request for comment beyond the blog post. Truell notes in the blog that Anysphere changed Cursor's pricing because 'new models can spend more tokens per request on longer-horizon tasks' — meaning that some of the latest AI models have become more expensive, spending a lot of time and computational resources to complete complicated, multi-step tasks. Cursor was eating those costs under its old Pro plan, but now, it's passing them along to users. Techcrunch event Save $450 on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Save $450 on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Boston, MA | REGISTER NOW While many AI models have lowered in price, the cutting edge of performance continues to be expensive — in some cases, more pricey than ever. Anthropic's recently launched Claude Opus 4 model is $15 per million input tokens (roughly 750,000 words, longer than the entire 'Lord of The Rings' series) and $75 per million output tokens. That's even more costly than Google's launch of Gemini 2.5 Pro in April, which was its most expensive AI model ever. In recent months, OpenAI and Anthropic have also started charging enterprise customers for 'priority' access to AI models — an additional premium on top of what AI models already cost that guarantees reliable, high speed performance. These expenses may be filtering their way down to AI coding tools, which seem to be getting more expensive across the industry. Users of another popular AI tool, Replit, were also caught off guard in recent weeks by pricing changes that made completing large tasks with AI more expensive. Cursor has become one of the most successful AI products on the market, reaching more than $500 million in ARR largely through subscriptions to its Pro plan. However, Cursor now faces intense competition from the AI providers it relies on, while simultaneously figuring out how to affordably serve their more expensive AI models. Anthropic's recently launched AI coding tool Claude Code has been a hit with enterprises, reportedly boosting the company's ARR to $4 billion, and likely taking some users from Cursor in the process. Last week, Cursor returned the favor by recruiting two Anthropic employees that led product development of Claude Code. But if Cursor intends to keep its market-leading position, it can't stop working with the state-of-the-art model providers — at least, not until its own home-grown models are more reasonably competitive. So Anysphere recently struck multi-year deals with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI to offer a $200-a-month Cursor Ultra plan with very high rate limits. Anthropic co-founder Jared Kaplan also told TechCrunch in June he plans to work with Cursor for a long time. However, it certainly feels as if the pressure between Cursor and AI model developers is building.
Yahoo
03-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Anysphere
Anysphere CEO Michael Truell Credit - Courtesy Cursor Even among AI startup unicorns, Anysphere stands out for its rocket-like ascent. Coding might be the first industry already being widely outsourced to AI, and Anysphere's popular AI-powered coding assistance software, Cursor, is redefining how many developers do their jobs. Able to generate code in any programming language, Cursor creates new functions, and offers suggestions and edits, based on software engineers' prompts. In June, the three-year-old company hit a valuation of $9.9 billion, and this year, it became one of the fastest companies to achieve $100 million in annual recurring revenue. 'It is clear to us that software engineering will change,' says Anysphere President Oskar Schulz. 'Anysphere's mission is to accelerate this evolution and reimagine what coding will look like in the future.' With developers at OpenAI, Midjourney, Shopify, Instacart and other businesses now using Cursor, that future is already arriving. Contact us at letters@
Arabian Post
01-07-2025
- Business
- Arabian Post
Cursor extends AI‑coding agents to the browser
Cursor's developer, Anysphere, today launched a browser‑based web app that enables users to manage a coordinated network of AI coding agents directly from desktop or mobile. The app allows developers to submit natural‑language tasks—such as building features or fixing bugs—to agents working autonomously in the background. Users can monitor progress, view agent‑generated code diffs, and merge changes into repositories—all without returning to the IDE. The web interface builds on earlier enhancements. In May, Cursor introduced 'background agents' capable of executing end‑to‑end code tasks with minimal supervision. A Slack integration followed in June, enabling teams to initiate tasks by mentioning '@Cursor' within chat threads. Anysphere's decision to expand beyond its IDE reflects strong demand, according to Andrew Milich, head of product engineering: 'remove the friction' for users who wish to invoke Cursor in more contexts. With the new web app, agents are accessible via any device with a browser, including via a progressive web app installable on mobile platforms. ADVERTISEMENT Behind the scenes, each background agent runs in its secure isolated environment—cloning repositories, working on branches, and pushing changes when tasks complete. Agents generate their own pull requests, and teams with Git repository access can review diffs via the web interface. Users may spawn multiple agents simultaneously, allowing parallel experimentation with different AI models from providers including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. Slack integration deepens collaboration: agents can be triggered by tagging @Cursor within conversations. They parse context—such as bug reports or stack traces—and return code proposals through GitHub pull requests, notifying the matching Slack channel when work finishes. This feature enables non‑technical stakeholders to engage with codeflows directly through chat. Anysphere confirmed that all paying users with access to background agents can use the new web app. It is available to subscribers on the $20 per month Pro plan and above, but not to users on the free tier. Business metrics underpin the move. Cursor surpassed $500 million in annualised recurring revenue last month, driven by monthly subscriptions. Anysphere says the platform is now used by more than half of Fortune 500 companies, including Nvidia, Uber and Adobe. To support enterprise needs, the company recently rolled out an enhanced tier priced at $200 per month. This tier offers significantly increased usage of AI models from multiple providers and advance access to features. Earlier this year, Anysphere closed a $900 million funding round at a $9.9 billion valuation—its third in under a year—and became one of the fastest software startups to hit $500 million ARR. Anysphere designed Cursor's agent rollout deliberately, avoiding premature 'demo‑ware' and intending agents to reliably deliver production‑grade code. CEO Michael Truell forecasts that by 2026 agents will handle at least 20 per cent of a software engineer's tasks. Industry analysts note that early adopters have embraced Cursor for its mature tooling and integrations. The IDE—based on Visual Studio Code—offers familiar features with added AI capabilities like smart rewrites, codebase querying and autocomplete. Among its peers, Cursor leads in reliability, with users citing its code quality and contextual awareness as competitive strengths. However, experts caution that expanded agent use may introduce new complexities. Discussions in developer forums highlight potential pitfalls of 'vibe coding'—using AI prompts in isolation—such as drifting from coherent architecture and leaking sensitive data like API keys. Even experienced users emphasise that success requires structured oversight and thoughtful documentation.
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Anysphere
Anysphere CEO Michael Truell Credit - Courtesy Cursor Even among AI startup unicorns, Anysphere stands out for its rocket-like ascent. Coding might be the first industry already being widely outsourced to AI, and Anysphere's popular AI-powered coding assistance software, Cursor, is redefining how many developers do their jobs. Able to generate code in any programming language, Cursor creates new functions, and offers suggestions and edits, based on software engineers' prompts. In June, the three-year-old company hit a valuation of $9.9 billion, and this year, it became one of the fastest companies to achieve $100 million in annual recurring revenue. 'It is clear to us that software engineering will change,' says Anysphere President Oskar Schulz. 'Anysphere's mission is to accelerate this evolution and reimagine what coding will look like in the future.' With developers at OpenAI, Midjourney, Shopify, Instacart and other businesses now using Cursor, that future is already arriving. Contact us at letters@ Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
