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Astral to Join OpenAI

https://astral.sh/blog/openai
878ibraheemdev | | 564 | HN
NiloCK | parent | next
A concern:

More and more plainly, OpenAI and Anthropic are making plays to own (and lease) the "means of production" in software. OK - I'm a pretty happy renter right now.

As they gobble up previously open software stacks, how viable is it that these stacks remain open? It seems perfectly sensible to me that these providers and their users alike have an interest in further centralizing the dev lifecycle - eg, if Claude-Code or Codex are interfaces to cloud devenvs, then the models can get faster feedback cycles against build / test / etc tooling.

But when the tooling authors are employees of one provider or another, you can bet that those providers will be at least a few versions ahead of the public releases of those build tools, and will enjoy local economies of scale in their pipelines that may not be public at all.

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throwaway63467 | parent | next
It’s a small tool shop building a tiny part of the Python ecosystem, let’s not overstate their importance. They burned through their VC money and needed an exit and CLI tool chains are hyped now for LLMs, but this mostly sounds like an acquihire to me. Dev tools are among the hardest things to monetize with very few real winners, so good for them to get a good exit.
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pixelsort | parent | next
In the many darker timelines that one can extrapolate, capturing essential tech stacks is just a pre-cursor to capturing hiring.

Once we start seeing Open AI and Anthropic getting into the certifications and testing they'll quickly become the gold standard. They won't even need to actually test anyone. People will simply consent to having their chat interactions analyzed.

The models collect more information about us than we could ever imagine because definitionally, those features are unknown unknowns for humans. For ML, the gaps in our thinking carry far richer information about is than our actual vocabularies, topics of interest, or stylometric idiosyncrasies.

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volkercraig | parent | next
It's not any different from the launch of the FSF. There's a simple solution. If you don't want your lunch eaten by a private equity firm, make sure whatever tool you use is GPL licensed.
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rTX5CMRXIfFG | parent | next
If it ever goes bad, well I hope that that’s an impetus for new open source projects to be started — and with improvements over and lessons learned from incumbent technologies, right at the v1 of said projects.
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| parent | next
{"deleted":true,"id":47441431,"parent":47439404,"time":1773935285,"type":"comment"}
cube2222 | parent | next
Honestly, for now they seem to be buying companies built around Open Source projects which otherwise didn't really have a good story to pay for their development long-term anyway. And it seems like the primary reason is just expertise and tooling for building their CLI tools.

As long as they keep the original projects maintained and those aren't just acqui-hires, I think this is almost as good as we can hope for.

(thinking mainly about Bun here as the other one)

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TrackerFF | parent | next
But how does this work out in the long run, in the case of AGI?

If AGI becomes available, especially at the local and open-source level, shouldn't all these be democratized - meaning that the AGI can simply roll out the tooling you need.

After all, AGI is what all these companies are chasing.

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{"deleted":true,"id":47441327,"parent":47439404,"time":1773934895,"type":"comment"}
butlike | parent | next
If it becomes too antagonistic, people will change. The desire to build things is larger than any given iron fist du jour. Just ask Oracle or IBM.
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bargainbin | parent | next
This is a logical conclusion of most open source tools in a capitalist economy, it's been this way for decades.

Equivalent or better tools will pop up eventually, heck if AI is so fantastic then you could just make one of your own, be the change you want to see in the world, right?

justinhj | parent | next
These are MIT/Apache 2. Sure they can buy and influence the direction but they can't prevent forks if they stray from what users want.
dismalaf | parent | next
Of course they're trying to capture existing tech stacks. The models themselves are plateauing (most advancement is coming from the non-LLM parts of the software), they took too much VC money so they need to make some of it back. So gobbling up wafers, software, etc... is the new plan for spending the money and trying to prevent catastrophic losses.
AndrewKemendo | parent | next
Explain to me how this is any different than Microsoft, Blackrock, Google, Oracle, Berkshire or any other giant company acquiring their way to market share?
gigatexal | parent | next
If our corporate overlords are gonna buy up all that is good I’d rather it have been Anthropic and not that wierdo humans-need-food-and-care for inference so LlMs aren’t that power hungry Sam Altman.

Oh well. They’ll hopefully get options and make millions when the IPO happens. Everyone eventually sells out. Not everyone can be funded by MIT to live the GNU maximalist lifestyle.

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dahlia | parent | next
What strikes me most about this acquisition isn't the AI angle. It's the question of why so many open source tools get built by startup teams in the first place.

I maintain an open source project funded by the Sovereign Tech Fund. Getting there wasn't easy: the application process is long, the amounts are modest compared to a VC round, and you have to build community trust before any of that becomes possible. But the result is a project that isn't on anyone's exit timeline.

I'm not saying the startup path is without its own difficulties. But structurally, it offloads the costs onto the community that eventually comes to depend on you. By the time those costs come due, the founders have either cashed out or the company is circling the drain, and the users are left holding the bag. What's happening to Astral fits that pattern almost too neatly.

The healthier model, I think, is to build community first and then seek public or nonprofit funding: NLnet, STF, or similar. It's slower and harder, but it doesn't have a built-in betrayal baked into the structure.

Part of what makes this difficult is that public funding for open source infrastructure is still very uneven geographically. I'm based in Korea, and there's essentially nothing here comparable to what European developers can access. I had no choice but to turn to European funds, because there was simply no domestic equivalent. That's a structural problem worth taking seriously. The more countries that leave this entirely to the private sector, the more we end up watching exactly this kind of thing play out.

hijodelsol | parent | next
This is a serious risk for the open source ecosystem and particularly the scientific ecosystem that over the last years has adopted many of these technologies. Having their future depend on a cap-ex heavy company that is currently (based on reporting) spending approx. 2.5 dollars to make a dollar of revenue and must have hypergrowth in the next years or perish is less than ideal. This should discourage anybody doing serious work to adopt more of the upcoming Astral technologies like ty and pyx. Hopefully, ruff and uv are large enough to be forked should (when) the time comes.
rst | parent | next
On the flip side, I'm not sure I ever saw a revenue plan or exit strategy for Astral other than acquihire. And most plausible bidders are unfortunate in one way or another.
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Maxion | parent | next
These tools are open source, if they lock them down the community will just fork them.
pjmlp | root | parent | next
Nice idea in theory, in practice is how many folks down in Nebraska are going to show up.
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pjmlp | parent | next
I never adopted them, keep using mostly Python written stuff.

Either pay for the product, or use stuff that isn't dependent on VC money, this is always how it ends.

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tmaly | parent | next
Would single maintainers of critical open source projects be a better situation?
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llll_lllllll_l | parent
I don't know how to search for that report, can you share it?
incognito124 | parent | next
Possibly the worst possible news for the Python ecosystem. Absolutely devastating. Congrats to the team
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dcre | parent | next
Can't blame you for not trusting OpenAI, but it seems to me they would gain very little from fucking up uv (or more precisely doing things that have a side effect of fucking up uv), and they have tons of incentive to cultivate developer good will. Better to think of buying and supporting a project like this as a very cheap way to make developers think they're not so bad.
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blitzar | parent | next
I hope they got paid, I will be very sad if they didn't at least get G5 money.
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vdfs | parent | next
On the other hand, we get to see what other thing will try to replace pip
PurpleRamen | parent
Yeah, no. there are many worse news than this.

In the worst case, Astral will stop developing their tools, someone else will pick them up and will continue polishing them. In the best case, they will just continue as they did until now, and nothing will really change on that front.

Astral is doing good work, but their greatest benefit for the ecosystem so far was showing what's possible and how it's down. Now everyone can take up the quest from here and continue. So any possible harm from here out will be not that deep, at worst we will be missing out on many more cool things they could have built.

huksley | parent | next
UV_DISABLE_AGENT=1 UV_DISABLE_AI_HINTS=1 uv add
jjice | parent | next
Not who I would've liked to acquire Astral. As long as OpenAI doesn't force bad decisions on to Astral too hard, I'm very happy for the Astral team. They've been making some of the best Python tooling that has made the ecosystem so much better IME.
smallpipe | parent | next
If Codex’s core quality is anything to go by, it’s time to create a community fork of UV
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supriyo-biswas | parent | next
Eh, if it turns out to be too bad I guess I’ll just end up switching back to pipenv, which is the closest thing to uv (especially due to the automatic Python version management, but not as fast).
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lern_too_spel | parent
The priorities of the tooling will change to help agents instead of human users directly. That's all that's happening.
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japhyr | parent | next
This has me thinking about VS Code and VS Codium. I've used VS Code for a while now, but recently grew annoyed at the increasingly prevalent prompts to subscribe to various Microsoft AI tools. I know you can make them go away, but if you bounce between different systems, and particularly deal with installing VS Code on a regular basis, it becomes annoying.

I started using VS Codium, and it feels like using VS Code before the AI hype era. I wonder if we're going to see a commercial version of uv bloated with the things OpenAI wants us all to use, and a community version that's more like the uv we're using right now.

sschueller | parent
MS is actively making your life using VS Codium a pain. They removed the download button the extension marketrplace making it very difficult to download extensions and installing them in VS Codium since VS Codium does not have access to the official MS extension marketplace. Many don't publish outside the marketplace for example Platformio. [1]

[1] https://github.com/platformio/platformio-vscode-ide/issues/1...

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ragebol | parent | next
Not often that I audibly groan at a HN headline :-(
alex_suzuki | parent | next
Same here. I’ve adopted uv across all of my Python projects and couldn’t be happier. ty looks very promising as well.

Probably inevitable, and I don’t blame the team, I just wish it were someone else.

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krick | parent
I think, it may be the first time I am actually upset by acquire announcement. I am usually like "well, it is what it is", but this time it just feels like betrayal.
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lucrbvi | parent | next
This is a weird pattern accross OpenAI/Anthropic to buy startups building better toolings.

I don't really see the value for OAI/Anthropic, but it's nice to know that uv (+ ty and many others) and Bun will stay maintained!

jpalomaki | parent | next
Somebody took a deeper look at Claude Code and claims to find evidence of Anthropic's PaaS offering [1]. There's certainly money to be made by offering a nice platform where "citizen developers" can push their code.

From Astral the (fast) linter and type checker are pretty useful companions for agentic development.

[1] https://x.com/AprilNEA/status/2034209430158619084

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synthc | parent | next
`uv agent` and `bun agent` in 3....2.....1....
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DoctorDabadedoo | parent | next
Good that they got some money and a longer runaway, but I have my doubts the product will improve rather than be smothered to death.

Embrace, extend, extinguish. Time will tell.

butlike | parent | next
They probably prompted for what they should do next and got this as a half-hallucinated response lol
0x3f | parent | next
> it's nice to know that uv (+ ty and many others) and Bun will stay maintained!

Depends if you think the bubble is going to pop, I suppose. In some sense, independence was insulation.

itissid | parent | next
Isn't this something to do with their paid pyx(as opposed to ty/ruff etc) thingy?
LoganDark | parent | next
I'm not so sure. I sort of wish they hadn't been acquired because these sort of acquihires usually result in stifling the competition while the incumbent stagnates. It definitely is an acquihire given OpenAI explicitly states they'll be joining the Codex team and only that their existing open-source projects will remain "maintained".
OutOfHere | parent | next
Why do you think that uv, etc. will stay maintained? They will for now, but as soon as cash is tight at OpenAI, they'll get culled so fast that you won't see it coming. This is the risk.
christina97 | parent
I mean they are “startups” on the way to mega-companies. They need internal tooling to match.
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jedahan | parent | next
great for astral, sucks for uv. was nice to have sane tooling at least for a few years, thanks for the gift.
pennomi | parent | next
Time for the PSF to consider something inspired by uv as a native solution.
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ziml77 | parent
I really hope they don't kill off uv or turn it into some way to sell OpenAI services. But I suspect that's exactly what's going to happen :(
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fnands | parent | next
Woah, first Anthropic buys Bun, now OpenAI Astral?

Seems like the big AI players love buying up the good dev tooling companies.

I hope this means the Astral folks can keep doing what they are doing, because I absolutely love uv (ruff is pretty nice too).

dcreager | parent | next
> I hope this means the Astral folks can keep doing what they are doing, because I absolutely love uv (ruff is pretty nice too).

That is definitely the plan!

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a3w | parent | next
JS vs Python wars, redux?
a-french-anon | parent
>Seems like the big AI players love buying up the good dev tooling companies.

Would be a good mustache-twirling cartoon villain tactics, you know, try to prevent advances in developer experience to make vibecoding more attractive =)

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KolmogorovComp | parent | next
It's a good news to me considering their open-source nature. If/when they go downhill there will be still the option to fork, and the previous work will still have been funded.

Now for those wondering who would fork and maintain it for free, that is more of a critic of FOSS in general.

JoshTriplett | parent | next
Welp. I used to respect Astral. I hope someone responsible forks their Python tooling and maintains it. Ideally a foundation rather than a company.
fortuitous-frog | parent | next
I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of the (stale) tooling that Astral replaced were managed by foundations instead of companies...
krick | parent
Yeah, well, the fact is that every person who ever touches Python needed uv, but only Astral folks created it. So, nope, there's no one capable of filling the void, just accept that it's fucked now. The best die first.
time0ut | parent | next
I love uv and the other tooling Astral has built. It really helped reinvigorate my love for Python over the last year.

Something like this was always inevitable. I just hope it doesn’t ruin a good thing.

jredwards | parent | next
As someone who loves Astral and hates OpenAI, this is making me pretty sad.
clickety_clack | parent | next
I don’t know who I would’ve like to see but them, buy OpenAI is not it. Sad day for uv, ruff and ty users.
petercooper | parent | next
I feel some "commoditize your complements" (Spolsky) vibes hearing about these acquisitions. Or, potentially, "control your complements"?

If you find your popular, expensive tool leans heavily upon third party tools, it doesn't seem a crazy idea to purchase them for peanuts (compared to your overall worth) to both optimize your tool to use them better and, maybe, reduce the efficacy of how your competitors use them (like changing the API over time, controlling the feature roadmap, etc.) Or maybe I'm being paranoid :-)

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photon_collider | parent | next
Reading this news only leaves me worried about long-term future of these open source tools.
Ekaros | parent
I have long since found the VC model for open source questionable. If you are not selling popular enough direct enterprise support what is the model to actually make money.

Take ruff, I have used it, but I had no idea it even had a company behind it... And I must not be only one and it must not be only tool like it...

weakfish | parent | next
What happens when OpenAI’s burn dries up their cash?
throwa356262 | parent | next
They mysteriously gain a lot of government contracts.

In a completely unrelated event, Donald sues Sam for 10M$ for calling him old, Sam grudingly agrees to pay him 16M$ and a beer.

gmerc | parent | next
That's where taxpayers come in a the ultimate bagholder.
Cthulhu_ | parent | next
They get more money from investors, go public, or get bought.
Fervicus | parent | next
Taxpayers bail them out.
prodigycorp | parent | next
$110B will surely last for at least a year.
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sourcegrift | parent | next
RAM prices go down. My hope though is that the period RAM prices stay up will put electron apps out of market.
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gedy | parent
"We must be regulated to contain the nuclear bomb like power of our products. Oh look it escaped again!", etc
kkirsche | parent | next
Happy for the team, sad for users. I just don’t believe their work will continue under new ownership
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afavour | parent | next
And so, more core functionality developers depend on becomes dependent on a continuing stream of billions in VC funding. What could go wrong?
mark_l_watson | parent | next
I am very unhappy about this. Astral tools like uv are key to my work/experimenting process. I think OpenAI sucks as a company.

That said, I hope the excellent Astral team got a good payday.

Fiveplus | parent | next
The "commitment to open source" line in these press releases usually has a half-life of about 18 months before the telemetry starts getting invasive.
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cozzyd | parent | next
This will solve the problem of when the package you want to install doesn't exist yet.
opyate | parent | next
This is your friendly PSA that pip-tools still exist.

https://github.com/jazzband/pip-tools

Ridius | parent
Ah but that's not a shiny new tool I can add to my cv /s
hmokiguess | parent | next
Mixed feelings, happy for the guy, he deserves it. Unhappy about whom he went with, though not sure if he had other buyers / offers in the mix?
backwardation_b | parent | next
I like uv, but not sure this is a good path forward for the python ecosystem.
pas | parent
why? lot's of good work came to Python by people who were sponsored by big tech companies. make Python better for them, and for a lot of other people too.

(sure, it's a bit different than contributing to CPython, but I'd argue not that different)

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Mxbonn | parent | next
uv and ruff are one of the best things that happened in the python ecosystem the last years. I hope this acquisition does not put them on a path to doom.
seanplusplus | parent | next
I'm into this.

Anthropic acquiring Bun, now OpenAI acquiring Astral. Both show the big labs recognize that great AI coding tools require great developer tooling, and they are willing to pay for it rather than build inferior alternatives. Good outcome for the teams.

Not exactly a great look for the "AGI is right around the corner" crowd — if the labs had it, they would not need to buy software from humans.

gritspants | parent
I'm assuming that they were buying great Rust devs (given codex is written in it).
fortuitous-frog | parent | next
While I -- like most other commenters -- am dubious of both OpenAI and this acquisition, I think it's pretty reasonable to wait to see how this turns out before rushing to final judgment.

Everything I've seen from Astral and Charlie indicates they're brilliant, caring, and overall reasonable folks. I think it's unfair to jump to call them sell-outs and cast uv and the rest as doomed projects.

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walthamstow | parent | next
Charlie's fine. OpenAI are the problem here. Similar situation to steipete. Happy for the person, sad for the tool/ecosystem/everyone else.
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yoyohello13 | parent
We always "wait and see" and it always turns out terrible. Even if the original founders stay on, eventually they will get pushed out when their morals conflict with company goals. Wont happen overnight, but uv will enshitify eventually.
natemcintosh | parent | next
Personally, I'd expect a few good years of stewardship, and then a decline in investment. I can only hope there are enough community members to keep things going by then.
isodev | parent | next
And this is why we don't use tools by VC funded corps.
ddxv | parent | next
This is why I still like to setup projects and environments with my own `make` `venv` and `pip`.
pgwalsh | parent | next
UV, Ruff, and Ty are all very good things, hopefully that doesn't change and gets better.
tom1337 | parent | next
As a non python dev I really thought UV and TY are great tools and liked their approaches but I don't know how good it is that they are privately held... no a fan
incognito124 | parent
Technically the tools are not privately held, they're OSS with a permissive licence. It's just that the bulk of work was done by them. The acquisition (ostensibly) changes none of that
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__mharrison__ | parent | next
Interesting acquihire. I would have assumed MS would have snagged them (until their __layoffs__ last year). My gut is that this is more for Python expertise, and ruff/ty knowledge of linting code than uv...

I'm a heavy user and instructor of uv. I'm teaching a course next week that features uv and rough (as does my recent Effective Testing book).

Interesting to read the comments about looking for a change. Honestly, uv is so much better than anything else in the Python community right now. We've used projects sponsored by Meta (and other questionable companies) in the past. I'm going to continue enjoying uv while I can.

amterp | parent | next
Happy for the devs, they deserve the presumably massive payout for the amount of value they’ve brought to the Python community.
kseniamorph | parent | next
i feel like moves like this make it even harder for new open-source tools to break through. there's already evidence that LLMs are biased toward established tools in their training data (you can check it here https://amplifying.ai/research/claude-code-picks). when a dominant player acquires the most popular toolchain in an ecosystem, that bias only deepens. not because of any skewing, but because the acquired tools get more usage, more documentation, more community content. getting a new project into model weights at meaningful scale is already really hard. acquisitions like this make it even harder.
fortuitous-frog | parent
I'm also concerned about this, but I feel as though uv and ruff's explosive growth happening alongside and despite that of LLMs demonstrates that it's not a show-stopper. I vividly recall LLM coding agents defaulting to pip/poetry and black/flake8, etc. for new projects. It still does that to some extent, but I see them using uv and ruff by default -- without any steering from me -- with far greater frequency.

Perhaps it's naive optimism, but I generally have hope that new and improved tools will continue to gain adoption and shine through in the training data, especially as post-training and continual learning improve.

AnishLaddha | parent | next
F*CK. take everything from me why dontcha?
vinhnx | parent | next
What excites me about the OpenAI + Astral acquisition: Codex CLI, uv, and ruff are all written in Rust. Fast by design, and fully open source.
phlakaton | parent | next
I hope OpenAI realizes they cannot buy developer goodwill.
this_user | parent
They are not trying to buy developer goodwill, they are trying to catch up with Antrophic in terms of getting those B2B contracts, which is currently the most realistic path towards not running out of money.
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wraptile | parent | next
Haha just migrated everything off openai and on ruff/uv/ty last week. Sorry guys, it's clearly my fault.
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ontouchstart | parent | next
It is interesting to see this after yesterday’s announcement of Unsloth Studio:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47414032

Uv did solve a distribution problem for them.

There is still a lot of room to grow in the space of software packaging and distribution.

the__alchemist | parent | next
Would there be any interest in me fixing the bugs in Pyflow and getting it updated to install newer python versions? It's almost identical to uv in concept, but I haven't touched it in 6 years.

Astral has demonstrated that there is desire for this sort of "just works" thing, which I struggled with, and led me to abandoning it. (I.e.: "pip/venv/conda are fine, why do I want this?", despite my personal experience with those as high-friction)

seanrrr | parent | next
My initial reaction was being weirdly sad about this and I don't fully understand why yet. I read the headline, clicked into the link, and just went noooooooo. I really like uv and I hope it continues to do well, congrats to the team though and hope everyone there gets a good outcome.
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geophph | parent | next
Welp. Guess we just wait for the next package management tool to come around. Really thought uv was gonna be the one.

Good for Astral though I guess, they do great work. Just not optimistic this is gonna be good for python devs long term.

testfrequency | parent | next
I’ve been thinking about purchasing zsh myself
dinosor | parent | next
I'm confused as to what will happen to their platform product which was in closed beta - pyx. Since they no longer need to worry about money (I assume) they no longer need to chase after enterprise customers?
T-A | parent
"OpenAI is focusing employee and investor attention on its enterprise business as the artificial intelligence startup gears up to go public, potentially by the end of the year, CNBC has learned."

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/17/openai-preps-for-ipo-in-2026...

chocks | parent | next
Fantastic for the team, huge fan for Ruff and Uv. Hope OpenAI continues with the OSS tooling and not introduce restrictive licensing.
bobajeff | parent | next
This might not be bad as long as Astral is allowed to continue to work on improving ty, uv and ruff. I do worry about they'll get distracted by their Codex job duties though.
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sublime_happen | parent | next
these (uv and bun) are not acquihires, they're acqui-rootaccess
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CuriouslyC | parent | next
The Bun acquisition made a little sense, Boris wanted Daddy Jarred to come clean up his mess, and Jarred is 100% able to deliver.

This doesn't make as much sense. OpenAI has a better low level engineering team and they don't have a hot mess with traction like Anthropic did. This seems more about acquiring people with dev ergonomics vision to push product direction, which I don't see being a huge win.

morphology | parent
They do have a hot mess with traction amongst developers. Codex is far behind Claude Code (in both the GUI and TUI forms), and OpenAI's chief of applications recently announced a pivot to focus more on "productivity" (i.e. software and enterprise verticals) because B2B yields a lot more revenue than B2C.
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articsputnik | parent | next
to be expected at some point, but for the independence and best interest of the Python ecosystem, I don't think it's a plus.
duskdozer | parent | next
Not surprised at all on this. I've been really suspicious about how hard `uv` was being pushed in 24/25.
moregrist | parent | next
I think the push has been entirely organic. Compared to existing tooling, uv is fantastically fast.

One of the bigger pain points I’ve faced in Python is dependency resolution. conda could take 30-60 minutes in some cases. uv took seconds.

A serious quality of life improvement.

zemo | parent | next
"was being pushed" ... by whom? I think there's widespread grassroots support for it because it's a good tool.
a_t48 | parent | next
Hey now, I was a completely organic shill! I worked for free!
yoyohello13 | parent
uv and ruff are incredible tools for python development, and I've loved my time using ty. This acquisition is absolutely terrible.
pjmlp | parent | next
Great that I keep using traditional Python tools.
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readitalready | parent | next
I'd expect OpenAi to make some type of Github clone next, perhaps with Astral, or maybe with jujutsu.
PurpleRamen | parent
Why? Github is already owned by Microsoft, who are deep in with OpenAI. And what worth would a Github-clone even have for the world? It's not like there is any important innovation left in that space at the moment, or are there any?
jfb | parent | next
Don't love it. But, I'm glad the Astral folks are getting the bag.
skeledrew | parent | next
After investing a bunch in converting my projects to, and evangelizing uv, I feel betrayed. I smell stability troubles ahead. Should've stuck to Conda.
JoshPurtell | parent
You most certainly should not have stuck with Conda
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Bnjoroge | parent | next
It was pretty obvious that some sort of acquisition was imminent. Astral is vc-funded and has to somehow generate returns for investors. An IPO is extremely unlikley in this market.
applfanboysbgon | parent | next
Company that repeatedly tells you software developers are obsoleted by their product buys more software developers instead of using said product to create software. Hmm.
lm28469 | parent | next
They said it'll be good enough in two weeks, give them some time!
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tedsanders | parent | next
I work at OpenAI. Software developers are not obsoleted by Codex or Claude Code, nor will they be soon.

For our teams, Codex is a massive productivity booster that actually increases the value of each dev. If you check our hiring page, you’ll see we are still hiring aggressively. Our ambitions are bigger than our current workforce, and we continue to pay top dollar for talented devs who want to join us in transforming how silicon chips provide value to humans.

Akin to how compilers reduced the demand for assembly but increased the demand for software engineering, I see Codex reducing the demand for hand-typed code but increasing the demand for software engineering. Codex can read and write code faster than you or me, but it still lacks a lot of intelligence and wisdom and context to do whole jobs autonomously.

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siva7 | parent | next
They're not buying developers, they are buying the whole ecosystem to produce software. Still aligned with their original message.
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largbae | parent | next
They're writing the software to end all softwares!
tripledry | parent | next
When someone at work talks about all software devs being replaced I link them to the Anthropic career pages.
avaer | parent | next
As good as the team is, that's not what they're buying in this case.
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waynesonfire | parent | next
And, they buy a company writing tooling for Python in not Python.
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AlexCoventry | parent
They probably have retention issues, due to selling out to fascism recently.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/03/openai-sam-altman-pentagon-d...

I know I stopped using them.

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brooke2k | parent | next
nooooooooooooooo god why. I loved uv. just why
jimmydoe | parent | next
It’s meant to be bought so at least no more guessing.

Ant is building their app distribution platform, so no wonder OpenAI thinking the same, it will only surprise me if they move so slow.

merrvk | parent | next
Who advises on these acquisitions?

Or are they just using a dartboard?

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pjmlp | parent | next
Great someone cashed out, time for the next startup idea.
nnevatie | parent | next
> I am so excited to keep building with you.

Fixed: I am so excited to take these millions of dollars.

maltelau | parent | next
Wtf!? Is this an early April's fools? I've been recommending astral tools left and right, Looks like I'm out a good chunk of social capital on that.

Who's organizing a fork, or is python back to having only shitty packaging available? :(

the__alchemist | parent
I can get pyflow back to a maintained state and iron out the bugs if that would help. It's the same concept as uv, just kind of buggy and I haven't touched it in 6 years.
nrvn | parent | next
Should I freeze my plans to migrate from `poetry` to `uv` at "${WORK}"?
tyree731 | parent | next
Assuming things start getting weird about 18 months from now, poetry and uv have very similar semantics, so 18 months of comically faster workflows sounds nice.
daredoes | parent | next
It would seem to me that purchasing a piece of software as an AI company is just an outright admission that they could not generate an equivalent piece of software for a better price?

If it was cheaper to use their internal AI to create these tools, they would.

wiseowise | parent
Extremely stupid argument. It doesn’t matter how good is your car if the driver is lacking.
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speedgoose | parent | next
I was hoping that uv and ruff were the ones. I guess Python has a curse.
suddenlybananas | parent | next
If they just give Astral money to keep going, great, but I have difficulty believing they would be so altruistic. This is quite an upsetting acquisition.
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Patt_ | parent | next
Whoa, So Sam and Drio are just gonna buy out every popular open source projects now?
Tyrubias | parent | next
I think it’s impossible to predict what will happen with this new trend of “large AI company acquires company making popular open source project”. The pessimist in me says that these products will either be enshittified over time, killed when the bubble bursts, or both. The pragmatist in me hopes that no matter what happens, uv and ruff will survive just like how many OSS projects have been forked or spun out of big companies. The optimist in me hopes that the extra money will push them to even greater heights, but the pessimist and the pragmatist beat the optimist to death a long time ago.
renewiltord | parent
It’s open source. If you want it to go in a different direction fork it and take it in that direction. Instead of the optimist, the pessimist, and the pragmatist the guy you need is the chap who does some work.
0xDEFACED | parent | next
will private packages hosted on pyx be available for openai to use as training data?
world2vec | parent | next
Just when I moved from poetry to uv.
godblessamerica | parent | next
How are they acquiring it without "open" in their name?
gessha | parent | next
I see people in this thread complain about the acquisition but the source code of uv is right there [1]. Fork it and move on. If ClosedAI enshittifies uv, gather with a bunch of other people and prop up a new version.

[1] https://github.com/astral-sh/uv

Bnjoroge | parent | next
This was pretty obvious to just about anyone tbh. FastAPI is probably next
incognito124 | parent | next
I thought some more about it, and unfortunately it makes sense. IIRC there were several "insider" blogposts from OpenAI that said something along the lines of "Yeah almost every service we write is FastAPI"
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incognito124 | parent
Don't even joke
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brcmthrowaway | parent | next
Can Astral's stuff be forked?
wrqvrwvq | parent | next
So instead of finally building an enterprise-grade package manager where you could pay for validated, verified and secure packages, we're going to vibe project management and let a slop-spiggot fill the trough. Brilliant. Incredibly pleased that the last sane tools in the entire python ecosystem are getting gutted to discourage the last few non-braindead devs from bothering.
wrqvrwvq | parent
Don't get me wrong I love getting 300 dependabot updates per day. It's a huge productivity booster and even if you devote 1/2 your dev team to keeping this shit up to date, you'd still be vulnerable to repo-jacking, because the entire pkg ecosystem is broken. The other thing i love about npm and pypi is the way a single small team will re-download in ci (regardless of caching) a TiB of packages all day long for no reason. Love waiting for gh actions to re-import infinite packages for the nth time before it times out and you restart it manually. makes so much sense. Great work all. glad openai is putting the nails in this retard coffin.
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tgtweak | parent | next
Amusing that the best python tools are written entirely in rust.
wiseowise | parent | next
…amusing how? CPython is written in C, JVM is written in mix of cpp and Java, Rust was written using OCaml initially. Don’t know why you’re snickering. Do you also find it amusing that by the time cpp/rust team scaffolds and compiles initial boilerplate, python team is already making money?
Kwpolska | parent
That's what you get with toy languages.
colesantiago | parent | next
If you don't pay for your tools and support OSS financially, this is what happens.

Although Astral being VC funded was already headed this way anyway.

Deno, Pydantic (Both Sequoia) will go the same way as with many other VC backed "open source" dev tools.

It will go towards AI companies buying up the very same tools, putting it in their next model update and used against you.

Rented back to you for $20/mo.

smahs | parent
There is nothing wrong with big money backing, often is necessary for long term bets, but rug pulling is a serious threat. VC funded open source has become a pattern/playbook.
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nusl | parent | next
I am actually quite saddened by this. It's very unlikely that' I'll keep using uv, now. I don't trust this kind of shit.
s_ting765 | parent | next
It should have been FastAPI instead.
keithluu | parent | next
Why do I feel uneasy about this?
wiseowise | parent | next
So begins the uv-Bun war.
dec0dedab0de | parent | next
Ugh, this isn't good.

I hate relying on anything that is controlled by a single company. Considering that Astral is basically brand new in the python timeline, it is concerning that they are already being acquired.

On the other hand, UV is so fast that it makes up for anything I find annoying about it.

h1fra | parent | next
what happen when openai goes brankrupt?
overflowy | parent | next
Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47438716
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sakesun | parent | next
Pyright and ty are under the same roof now.
codethief | parent
How so? Pyright is being developed by Microsoft.
fantasizr | parent | next
should I be glad I never got off pip?
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cess11 | parent | next
If I were to engage in Python development, what's the alternative to uv?
bikelang | parent | next
Poetry was the best alt-package manager before uv came along. That said - uv completely outclassed it.
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duskdozer | parent | next
What are you having an issue with? Environments? pyenv. Dependency management? pip+requirements.
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umren | parent
no real alternative
cesarvarela | parent | next
So vite.dev is next.
petterroea | parent | next
How does this make sense
croes | parent | next
So no problem in joining OpenAI after the whole DoD/DoW mess?

> I started Astral to make programming more productive.

And now they help make killing more productive

Fervicus | parent | next
I (along with many others) always thought that Astral being VC backed is going to lead to a future disappointment for the community.
duskdozer | parent
I don't understand how anyone is surprised at this point. VC project trying to build a brand just isn't going to lead to some utopic community.
saxwick | parent | next
Btw astral repo has Claude as one of its top contributors
yoyohello13 | parent | next
Oh no! This is actually terrible. Get ready for "premium tooling only available in Codex(TM)".
butterlettuce | parent | next
This is where POTUS should step in and stop this sale. Not cool.
OutOfHere | parent | next
This acquisition doesn't make too much sense for the longevity of Astral's software because Astral's software is orthogonal to Codex. It seems more like a acqui-hire. If tomorrow OpenAI were to stop funding Astral's software due to a cash crunch, it would be game over for uv et al. Codex doesn't need uv.
am17an | parent | next
Welp, back to pip
zoobab | parent | next
Undisclosed amount?
fithisux | parent | next
Astral to Join OpenAI (astral.sh) OpenAI to Acquire Astral(https://openai.com/index/openai-to-acquire-astral/)

what can I say?

emddudley | parent | next
Well shit, I feel betrayed. This is exactly the opposite of what I thought Charlie's goals were. I thought he was focused on making the Python ecosystem better.
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Imustaskforhelp | parent | next
I really loved uv, I am happy for the developers at astral but I am sad as a user seeing this :(

Any good alternatives to uv/plans for community fork of uv?

noodletheworld | parent | next
I really love uv.

Its always hard to really trust these corporate funded open source products, but they've honestly been great.

…but I find it difficult to believe openai owning the corner stone of the python tooling ecosystem is good thing for the python ecosystem.

There is no question openai will start selling/bundling codex (and codex subscriptions) with uv.

I dont think I want my package manger doing that.

bethekidyouwant | parent
“There is no question openai will start selling/bundling codex (and codex subscriptions) with uv.” What does that even mean?
FergusArgyll | parent | next
Hn's favorite company meets hn's most hated company.

Hilarity in the comments will ensue

Imustaskforhelp | parent | next
Genuinely. UV is so awesome and OpenAI is so meh.

I am not even sure how to feel about this news but feel a bit disappointed as a user even if I might be happy for the devs that they got money for such project but man, I would've hoped any decent company could've bought them out rather than OpenAI of all things.

Maybe OpenAI wants to buy these loved companies to lessen some of the hate but what its doing is lessening the love that we gave to corporations like astral/uv sadly, which is really sad because uv is/(was?) so cool but now we don't know where this tool might be headed next given its in the hands of literally OpenAI :(

throwa356262 | parent | next
"Sir, you now have twice as many private jets as Dario"

"But he owns a tooling company. WHY can't I have that? :( :("

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prodigycorp | parent | next
Codex team now has the legends who created Pyright and UV/Ruff/Ty.
Hamuko | parent | next
So, any good alternatives to uv?
ragebol | parent
pixi? https://pixi.prefix.dev/latest/

Have not tried it too much yet because I was pretty content with `uv`, but I've heard lots of good things about it

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Hackbraten | parent | next
Don’t you dare enshittify my uv.
odie5533 | parent
Can we rename it to Codex?
drcongo | parent | next
This is the worst possible news. Fantastic team at Astral joining a bunch of scumbag scammers at "Open"AI.
acedTrex | parent | next
damn it, another one bites the dust sadly
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gethwhunter34 | parent | next
the comments here are better than the article lol
moralestapia | parent | next
[flagged]
dang | parent | next
Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines? We've warned/asked you countless times. You should know not to post like this by now.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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Philpax | parent
Astral's tooling is excellent and almost makes up for Python being a badly-designed language. Almost.
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WhereIsTheTruth | parent | next
Greed knows no limit

OpenAI is Microslop, so it's the classic EEE, nothing new to see

It's like with systemd now planning to enforce gov. age verification

People will censor you if you dare say something negative on this website

So i guess, wears a clown hat "congrats!"

999900000999 | parent | next
Congrats!

This of course means more VC funding for FOSS tools since a successful exit is a positive signal.

baq | parent | next
Funding is as good as gone until the Iran mess is over.
bogwog | parent
> a successful exit is a positive signal

This is peak finance brainrot. In no scenario is abandoning ship a positive signal, even if you managed to pocket some valuables on the way out.

Let's stop celebrating dysfunctional business models and consolidation of the industry around finance bros who give zero fucks about said industry.

holografix | parent
Solid move by Altman - good signal they’re serious about capturing the Claude Code market from Anthropic.

What I don’t understand is why hasn’t anyone bought Jetbrains yet.

Atlassian? AWS? Google?

hirako2000 | parent | next
Because Jetbrain strategy wasn't to burn money with free tools to eventually exit with the jackpot. They have been profitable for over a decade, simply asking users to pay a fair price for great product.
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user34283 | parent | next
Atlassian? Bitbucket as a platform for agentic development.. shudder
KeplerBoy | parent
Most likely because Jetbrains is not for sale. Google almost certainly offered to buy at some point.
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