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by didibus 308 days ago
I'm actually starting to think the opposite.

If Cursor can build the better UX for all the use-cases, mobile/desktop chatbot, assistant, in IDE coding agent, CLI coding agent, web-based container coding agent, etc.

In theory, they can spend all their resourcing on this, so you could assume they could have those be more polished.

If they win the market-share here, than the models are just commodity, Cursor lets you pick which ever is best at any given time.

In a sense, "users" are going to get locked in on the tooling. They learn the commands, configuration, and so on of Cursor, it's a higher cost for them to re-learn a different UX. Uninstalling and re-installing another app, plugin, etc. is annoying.

1 comments

No, model providers are not going to let Cursor eat their pie. The biggest cost in AI is in developing LLM models and inference. Players incurring those costs will basically control this market.
I don't think we'll have more than 2 players. I think it's like AMD and Intel, the LLM is almost like providing hardware. The software that exposes the LLM capabilities to the user is the layer that will be able to differentiate.

The models are just going to be fighting performance/cost. And people will choose the best performance for their budget.

And that's ignoring how good local models are getting as well.

It's not that they'll have their launch eaten by Cursor, it's just that they can't be as focused on user experience when they're also laser focused on improving the models to stay competitive.

Unless a model provider utterly and completely dominates the scene (which won't happen, unless for brief periods of time) well thought tools with a consistent ux and switchable model providers have absolutely their place.

Models are commodities.