OpenAI acquires Astral, the Python toolmaker, to enhance Codex AI coding assistant as it competes with Anthropic's Claude Code and Cursor.

OpenAI announced Thursday that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Astral, the company behind popular open source Python development tools such as uv, Ruff, and ty, and integrate the company ...

OpenAI's most significant competitors in the AI coding space include Cursor and Anthropic ( ANTHRO ). Cursor is in talks with investors for a funding round that would value the startup at about $50B.

At GTC 2026, Jensen Huang, Aravind Srinivas, Harrison Chase, Mira Murati, and Michael Truell made a compelling case that the future of AI belongs to open agent systems, not just open models.

“AI may generate code faster than any human,” Guo said. “But the need to understand what code is doing has only intensified. AI generates code that may seem right, but it isn’t always reliable. You ...