News: 0181049988

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

OpenAI Acquires Developer Tooling Startup Astral (cnbc.com)

(Thursday March 19, 2026 @06:00PM (BeauHD) from the latest-acquisition dept.)


OpenAI [1]announced it's [2]acquiring developer tooling startup Astral to strengthen its Codex AI coding assistant, which has over 2 million weekly users and has seen a three-fold increase in user growth since the start of the year. CNBC reports:

> "Through it all, though, our goal remains the same: to make programming more productive. To build tools that radically change what it feels like to build software," Astral's founder and CEO Charlie Marsh wrote in a blog post. The company's acquisition of Astral is still subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval.



[1] https://openai.com/index/openai-to-acquire-astral/

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/19/openai-to-acquire-developer-tooling-startup-astral.html


Removing competition (Score:3)

by AcidFnTonic ( 791034 )

Strengthen by removing competition

Re: (Score:2)

by dfghjk ( 711126 )

Also, interesting how much acquiring a non-profit can do. Free markets at work.

Ugh (Score:2)

by RevRagnarok ( 583910 )

I'm a fan of "ruff" and had hopes for moving some stuff to "uv" - I guess it's time to rethink that.

Re: (Score:2)

by ratbag ( 65209 )

Indeed. I've been using `uv` for a year and don't really want to lose it, but this is surely game over.

Also, why didn't OpenAI just get someone to vibe equivalent tools into existence for them? I sure ain't buying their dog food.

Instead of "make programming more productive" (Score:2)

by MpVpRb ( 1423381 )

It would be better to create AI tools that made software more secure, bug-free and efficient

More productive tools to creating bloated, inefficient, bug-ridden, insecure slop doesn't help

Astral uv for Python ... (Score:2)

by kbahey ( 102895 )

Some background from personal use of Astral's products ...

Astral makes a tool called [1]uv [astral.sh], for Python.

It offers one solution to an important problem in the Python ecosystem.

Certain projects require certain versions of Python.

You may end up with two projects that you need on the same machine, but with different Python versions.

For example, you want to run Home Assistant and AppDaemon.

Using uv, you can have two separate virtual environments (venv) each with its own version of Python.

It is also lightning speed f

[1] https://docs.astral.sh/uv/

A manager was about to be fired, but a programmer who worked for him
invented a new program that became popular and sold well. As a result, the
manager retained his job.
The manager tried to give the programmer a bonus, but the programmer
refused it, saying, "I wrote the program because I though it was an
interesting concept, and thus I expect no reward."
The manager, upon hearing this, remarked, "This programmer, though he
holds a position of small esteem, understands well the proper duty of an
employee. Lets promote him to the exalted position of management consultant!"
But when told this, the programmer once more refused, saying, "I exist
so that I can program. If I were promoted, I would do nothing but waste
everyone's time. Can I go now? I have a program that I'm working on."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"