Astral to Join OpenAI

1454 points - last Thursday at 1:05 PM

Source

Comments

NiloCK last Thursday at 1:48 PM
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.

dahlia last Thursday at 4:13 PM
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 last Thursday at 1:33 PM
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.
incognito124 last Thursday at 1:32 PM
Possibly the worst possible news for the Python ecosystem. Absolutely devastating. Congrats to the team
huksley last Thursday at 1:38 PM
UV_DISABLE_AGENT=1 UV_DISABLE_AI_HINTS=1 uv add
jjice last Thursday at 1:56 PM
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.
japhyr last Thursday at 2:01 PM
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.

ragebol last Thursday at 2:04 PM
Not often that I audibly groan at a HN headline :-(
lucrbvi last Thursday at 1:19 PM
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!

jedahan last Thursday at 1:41 PM
great for astral, sucks for uv. was nice to have sane tooling at least for a few years, thanks for the gift.
fnands last Thursday at 1:29 PM
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).

aanet last Thursday at 9:18 PM
Uff. Reading all the comments made my head hurt.

I love(d) `uv`. I think it's one of the best tools around for Python ecosystem... Therefore the pit in my tummy when I read this.

Yes, congrats to the team and all that.

I'm more worried about the long term impact on the ecosystem, as are almost everybody who dropped a comment here.

My own thoughts echo somewhat what @SimonW wrote here [1]

[1] https://simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/19/openai-acquiring-astra...

However, a forking strategy is may (or may not) be the best for `uv`.

Could we count on the Astral team to keep uv in a separate foundation?

KolmogorovComp last Thursday at 1:37 PM
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.

selectnull last Thursday at 6:38 PM
I see a lot of comments that are "somebody should fork this" or "community will fork it" or similar.

I didn't see a single comment of "I will fork it" type.

JoshTriplett last Thursday at 2:07 PM
Welp. I used to respect Astral. I hope someone responsible forks their Python tooling and maintains it. Ideally a foundation rather than a company.
time0ut last Thursday at 1:51 PM
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.

petercooper last Thursday at 2:08 PM
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 :-)

jredwards last Thursday at 3:28 PM
As someone who loves Astral and hates OpenAI, this is making me pretty sad.
clickety_clack last Thursday at 2:12 PM
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.
kkirsche last Thursday at 1:51 PM
Happy for the team, sad for users. I just don’t believe their work will continue under new ownership
weakfish last Thursday at 1:36 PM
What happens when OpenAI’s burn dries up their cash?
photon_collider last Thursday at 1:40 PM
Reading this news only leaves me worried about long-term future of these open source tools.
afavour last Thursday at 1:43 PM
And so, more core functionality developers depend on becomes dependent on a continuing stream of billions in VC funding. What could go wrong?
ryguz yesterday at 2:56 PM
Writing uv in Rust solved a structural constraint that Python-based alternatives could not escape. A Python package manager that depends on Python to run has a bootstrapping problem: it cannot manage the Python environment it needs to operate. A static Rust binary runs before any Python environment exists. That is not a performance optimization, it is an architectural prerequisite for a correct implementation.

Earlier Python-based attempts faced this constraint plus the political difficulty of getting maintainers to agree on what correct dependency resolution even meant. uv sidestepped both by being built outside the ecosystem it manages.

Fiveplus last Thursday at 3:12 PM
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.
mark_l_watson last Thursday at 3:20 PM
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.

rsmtjohn yesterday at 7:26 AM
First comment I've posted here, been lurking for a while.

Been running uv in every AI/ML project for the past year -- the speed difference when resolving large dependency trees (PyTorch + transformers + a dozen extras) is genuinely significant. It's one of those tools where you forget how bad pip was until you have to go back.

Coming from a Rust background I have a lot of respect for the implementation decisions that made that speed possible. My main concern isn't feature direction -- it's that the team culture IS the product right now, and that's harder to preserve than a codebase. Cautiously watching.

sota_pop last Thursday at 6:12 PM
> uvex init my_new_slop_project —-describe “make me the bestest saas that will make $1M ARR per day” —-disable_thinking —-disable_slop_scaffolded_feature

> uvex add other_slop_project —-disable_peddled_package_recommendations

> implicitly phoning home your project, all source code, its metadata, and inferring whether your idea/use-case is worth steamrolling with their own version.

This is the future of “development”. Congrats to the team.

isodev last Thursday at 2:39 PM
And this is why we don't use tools by VC funded corps.
seanplusplus last Thursday at 3:25 PM
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.

sharkjacobs last Thursday at 6:03 PM
Congrats to the Astral team, they've done great work and deserve everything.

As a user of uv who was hoping it would be a long term stable predictable uninteresting part of my toolchain this sucks, right?

Mxbonn last Thursday at 1:30 PM
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.
opyate last Thursday at 3:05 PM
This is your friendly PSA that pip-tools still exist.

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

talideon last Thursday at 10:54 PM
Well, that's the first shoe dropping. Thankfully uv and ruff are MIT licensed and in a good place, so worst comes to worst...
backwardation_b last Thursday at 1:31 PM
I like uv, but not sure this is a good path forward for the python ecosystem.
hmokiguess last Thursday at 1:53 PM
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?
ddxv last Thursday at 2:10 PM
This is why I still like to setup projects and environments with my own `make` `venv` and `pip`.
cozzyd last Thursday at 2:11 PM
This will solve the problem of when the package you want to install doesn't exist yet.
sublime_happen last Thursday at 1:48 PM
these (uv and bun) are not acquihires, they're acqui-rootaccess
pugchat yesterday at 7:11 AM
The pattern here is worth naming: OpenAI is systematically acquiring the infrastructure layer that developers depend on. First the models, now the build tools.

For anyone thinking through what this means for their data: OpenAI's API terms give them broad rights to use inputs for model improvement. Once uv is part of that stack, it's worth asking what "telemetry" looks like under their ownership.

This is exactly why I've moved my AI usage to platforms built around data sovereignty—ones where your conversations don't feed back into the mothership. The tooling acquisition makes it more urgent, not less.

[Disclosure: I work with pugchat.ai, a privacy-first AI platform—mentioning because it's relevant to the data sovereignty point, not to shill]

duskdozer last Thursday at 2:22 PM
Not surprised at all on this. I've been really suspicious about how hard `uv` was being pushed in 24/25.
moezd yesterday at 5:26 AM
Noooo, uv, you were the chosen one! (meme)

Jokes aside, these tools are currently absolutely free to use, but imagine a future when your employers demand you use Claude Code because that's the only license agreement they have, and they stop their AI agents from using uv. Sure, we all know how to use uv, but there will also come a time and place when they will ask us to not write a single line of code manually, especially if you have your agents running in "feared the most by clueless middle managers" "production".

Are you ready for factionalism and sandbox wars? Because I'm not. I just want to write my code, push to "production" as I see fit and be happy as pixels start shifting around.

natemcintosh last Thursday at 2:44 PM
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.
tom1337 last Thursday at 1:34 PM
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
fnands last Thursday at 1:33 PM
Related (OpenAI announcement): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47438716
fortuitous-frog last Thursday at 3:19 PM
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.

vinhnx last Thursday at 3:49 PM
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.
CuriouslyC last Thursday at 2:11 PM
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.

19205817 last Thursday at 6:32 PM
Astral threads here have been surprisingly flag resistant and plentiful. This takeover explains a lot.

I suspect some OpenClaw "secure" sandbox is coming (Nvidia jealousy) with Astral delivering the packages for Docker within Docker within Qemu within Qubes. A self respecting AI stack must be convoluted.

I can't wait until all this implodes after the IPOs.

jt-hill last Thursday at 6:40 PM
Astral was always going to have to find some way to sustain itself financially. They weren’t going to just make the best free tools in the ecosystem forever. uv is sufficiently entrenched as infrastructure that I’m sure it’ll take no time for a community fork to show up if they do anything stupid with it.
wraptile last Thursday at 3:50 PM
Haha just migrated everything off openai and on ruff/uv/ty last week. Sorry guys, it's clearly my fault.
amterp last Thursday at 1:46 PM
Happy for the devs, they deserve the presumably massive payout for the amount of value they’ve brought to the Python community.
seanrrr last Thursday at 3:48 PM
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.
AnishLaddha last Thursday at 1:48 PM
F*CK. take everything from me why dontcha?
heavyset_go yesterday at 3:24 AM
Astral took over python-build-standalone, and uv uses its custom Python builds in deployments.

I do not want OpenAI putting their fingers in my Python binaries, nor do I want their telemetry.

kseniamorph last Thursday at 2:25 PM
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.
phlakaton last Thursday at 1:35 PM
I hope OpenAI realizes they cannot buy developer goodwill.
pgwalsh last Thursday at 3:24 PM
UV, Ruff, and Ty are all very good things, hopefully that doesn't change and gets better.
tuananh yesterday at 1:30 AM
they said they will keep maintaining uv/ruff/ty ... but that's an impossible promise to keep with their priority changes once they are in the bed with OAI.
hatefulheart yesterday at 6:44 AM
There are so many comments along the lines of:

"What's the matter, just fork it when it goes bad?"

The problem is that uv in and of itself, whilst a great technical achievement isn't sufficient. Astral run a massive DevOps pipeline that, just to give one example, packages the python distributions.

Those who are saying that forking is an option are clearly not arguing it in good faith.

looneysquash last Thursday at 6:02 PM
I don't get it. Why buy Astral? Why not just fund it? Why not just hire the company to do whatever work you want to get out of the team as part of the merger?

Why buy, when they can rent?

(Not to mention, multiple companies could hire and fund them.)

__mharrison__ last Thursday at 3:07 PM
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.

testfrequency last Thursday at 3:19 PM
I’ve been thinking about purchasing zsh myself
UqWBcuFx6NV4r last Thursday at 9:22 PM
This is like, the worst outcome for Astral. This is severely disappointing. I say this as someone that uses Astral and OpenAI products practically every day. This is such a terrible fit.

I just hope that Charlie doesn’t trot around the dev circuit (like he has in years past) trying to sell everyone on this “being a good thing, actually”. I hope that he isn’t given the space to sell any story other than “we took the AI money despite it being a terrible fit”, because that story would just be a lie. The fact that this blog post is already trying to preemptively justify it—“well in my launch post what I said is
”—is extremely, extremely telling.

This is so hugely disappointing. And again, I am at this point quite bullish on AI. This isn’t a philosophical or anti-AI take at all, because those are easier to dismiss.

I’m not going to pretend to “congratulate the team” or whatever. As far as I’m concerned, that’s HN culture brain rot. Some of y’all in ‘startup culture’ may see getting acquired by OpenAI as some sort of big prize or worth celebrating or whatever, but I certainly don’t.

geophph last Thursday at 1:33 PM
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.

execution last Thursday at 5:15 PM
I do hope every at Astral got a a nice pay-out for this.

It does look like this is going to be the norm for popular open source projects related to AI ecosystem, but I guess open source developers need to get paid somehow if that project is their only livelihood.

Shame for the end-user though. As you will always be second guessing how they will ruin the tool, i.e. via data collection or AI-sloppifying it. It is likely OpenAI won't, but it is not a great feeling knowing a convenient tool you use is at the whim of a heartless mega-corp.

dinosor last Thursday at 1:36 PM
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?
krick last Thursday at 6:03 PM
Tested the "Kagi LinkedIn Speak" translator[0] from a couple of days ago[1] on this. Works pretty great! If you translate it back and forth a number of times, it pretty much distills it to the essence.

[0] https://translate.kagi.com/?from=linkedin&to=en

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47408703

bobajeff last Thursday at 1:59 PM
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.
the__alchemist last Thursday at 2:42 PM
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)

gehsty yesterday at 12:24 AM
They should be allowed to make money from their work. Their work is MIT licensed, if it goes south it is rescuable by the community.

Things come and go, let’s not beat up some dudes who made some cool stuff, made everyone’s lives easier and then sold up. There is a timeline where this makes UV / python better.

skeledrew last Thursday at 3:00 PM
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.
bergheim yesterday at 12:00 AM
Given their statements, influencers and indeed their raison d'ĂȘtre I don't understand why this and bun was acquired? Why did they not just Ralph loop it? Claude is famously not made by humans anymore.

One prompt and call it a weekend. Surely they have the compute.

Oooooh, right.

Same reason we don't have windows 41 either.

dankwizard yesterday at 5:21 AM
OpenAI continue to send mixed messaging.

"Our AI can do anything a human can do, better, faster, cheaper" -> Buys a product instead of asking their AI to just make it.

Really doesn't give me confidence in your product!!!!

chocks last Thursday at 2:57 PM
Fantastic for the team, huge fan for Ruff and Uv. Hope OpenAI continues with the OSS tooling and not introduce restrictive licensing.
articsputnik last Thursday at 2:06 PM
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.
pjmlp last Thursday at 1:47 PM
Great that I keep using traditional Python tools.
ontouchstart last Thursday at 3:51 PM
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.

readitalready last Thursday at 1:41 PM
I'd expect OpenAi to make some type of Github clone next, perhaps with Astral, or maybe with jujutsu.
Tyrubias last Thursday at 1:57 PM
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.
linhns last Thursday at 4:59 PM
> It is increasingly clear to me that Codex is that frontier.

I'm not really sure about this.

deleted last Thursday at 1:35 PM
applfanboysbgon last Thursday at 1:37 PM
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.
brooke2k last Thursday at 3:11 PM
nooooooooooooooo god why. I loved uv. just why
7xgames yesterday at 5:40 AM
This feels like a natural move given how important developer tooling has become to the AI ecosystem. If OpenAI can integrate Astral’s tooling into workflows more deeply (linting, packaging, etc.), it could significantly reduce friction for building AI-powered apps.

The interesting question is whether Astral stays relatively independent (like GitHub under Microsoft) or becomes tightly coupled to OpenAI’s platform.

speedgoose last Thursday at 3:23 PM
I was hoping that uv and ruff were the ones. I guess Python has a curse.
portly last Thursday at 7:04 PM
Will this be the beginning of the Great Rust vs Zig battle ?
Bnjoroge last Thursday at 2:32 PM
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.
ebri last Thursday at 7:09 PM
I will start migrating from uv, ty and ruff first thing this weekend. It will be painful but not being dependent on OpenAI will be more than worth it.
apitman last Thursday at 4:13 PM
jimmydoe last Thursday at 2:13 PM
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.

bilalel last Thursday at 8:23 PM
That's unfortunate for the python community. I can understand the move by Astral team, but it's still difficult to accept it.
gessha last Thursday at 3:18 PM
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

rockstar2001 yesterday at 5:06 AM
All other devtools now will follow suit - to get acquihired by openai or anthropic.
pjmlp last Thursday at 1:49 PM
Great someone cashed out, time for the next startup idea.
deskamess last Thursday at 7:32 PM
uv has been very useful but I also looking at pixi. Anyone have any experience with that? I hear good things about it.
merrvk last Thursday at 2:29 PM
Who advises on these acquisitions?

Or are they just using a dartboard?

ACV001 yesterday at 8:29 AM
ok so the buying frenzy has started. We will end up with a new google basically monopolizing the internet. Only in this case it is much worse. M&As are evil.
colesantiago last Thursday at 1:36 PM
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.

suddenlybananas last Thursday at 1:31 PM
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.
yoyohello13 last Thursday at 5:48 PM
Thanemate last Thursday at 6:12 PM
Any move that strengthens future oligopolies is a net loss for all consumers.

I don't care how good/bad a company is, because I lived long enough to know that most of them started off like that. Good luck to the uv team.

maltelau last Thursday at 2:24 PM
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? :(

Fervicus last Thursday at 2:31 PM
I (along with many others) always thought that Astral being VC backed is going to lead to a future disappointment for the community.
hollow-moe last Thursday at 1:44 PM
rip uv
zx8080 yesterday at 2:31 AM
Counting days until "uv will stop being dveloped".
world2vec last Thursday at 1:50 PM
Just when I moved from poetry to uv.
deleted last Thursday at 5:32 PM
nnevatie last Thursday at 3:24 PM
> I am so excited to keep building with you.

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

Patt_ last Thursday at 2:33 PM
Whoa, So Sam and Drio are just gonna buy out every popular open source projects now?
0xDEFACED last Thursday at 2:22 PM
will private packages hosted on pyx be available for openai to use as training data?
nrvn last Thursday at 3:11 PM
Should I freeze my plans to migrate from `poetry` to `uv` at "${WORK}"?
jfb last Thursday at 4:42 PM
Don't love it. But, I'm glad the Astral folks are getting the bag.
emddudley last Thursday at 3:10 PM
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.
Bnjoroge last Thursday at 2:32 PM
This was pretty obvious to just about anyone tbh. FastAPI is probably next
daredoes last Thursday at 3:40 PM
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.

mhd last Thursday at 5:43 PM
Maybe it's time to get out my Cowlishaw Rexx book again

Lws803 last Thursday at 6:26 PM
Wonder if they can still use claude code in their repos now
fastasucan last Thursday at 7:20 PM
This leaves me a bit scared for uv and ruff to be honest.
godblessamerica last Thursday at 2:55 PM
How are they acquiring it without "open" in their name?
6thbit last Thursday at 8:45 PM
py stuff aside for a sec, having this team working on Codex will be huge.

I didn’t see a way they ever dethroned Claude until now.

Happy as a Codex user, gloomy as a Python one.

wrqvrwvq last Thursday at 2:22 PM
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.
tgtweak last Thursday at 2:15 PM
Amusing that the best python tools are written entirely in rust.
nusl last Thursday at 1:51 PM
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.
brikym last Thursday at 8:41 PM
Does this mean pip is finally getting PIP'd?
saxwick last Thursday at 3:27 PM
Btw astral repo has Claude as one of its top contributors
joshuawright11 last Thursday at 6:14 PM
Wow - this is potentially the most cynical hacker news thread I've ever read. When did this place trade it's curiosity and excitement about technology for constant doomerism?

Congrats Astral and co!

waba99 last Thursday at 5:28 PM
I wonder who's going to pick up VoidZero
wiseowise last Thursday at 7:09 PM
So many negative comments but not a single:

- I'm willing to pay for Astral ecosystem so it stays independent/open source

- I'm willing to fork the project

sakesun last Thursday at 1:43 PM
Pyright and ty are under the same roof now.
overflowy last Thursday at 1:50 PM
klysm last Thursday at 5:02 PM
Damnit I was really rooting for uv :(
h1fra last Thursday at 2:13 PM
what happen when openai goes brankrupt?
s_ting765 last Thursday at 3:28 PM
It should have been FastAPI instead.
keithluu last Thursday at 3:14 PM
Why do I feel uneasy about this?
RS-232 yesterday at 1:19 PM
Does it go without saying that OpenAI/majority shareholder Microsoft can unilaterally change the licenses and take Astral’s repos offline (completely against the will of Charlie or the community)?

Regardless of how likely/inevitable this scenario is, the public should make offline backups and forks immediately.

brcmthrowaway last Thursday at 4:29 PM
Can Astral's stuff be forked?
croes last Thursday at 4:23 PM
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

submeta yesterday at 12:48 PM
I hope OpenAI will be here long enough so we have uv in twenty years from now. uv totally changed the way I work with Python, so I wouldn't want to miss it.
cess11 last Thursday at 1:59 PM
If I were to engage in Python development, what's the alternative to uv?
wiseowise last Thursday at 3:44 PM
So begins the uv-Bun war.
globular-toast yesterday at 10:27 AM
Well that's ruined my morning.

I was always wary of uv being written in Rust. Even if we can make a community fork, how big is the intersection between great Rust developers and people really into Python packaging and infrastructure? Not big, I would assume.

I do wonder if we should just rewrite something in Python, but make sure it runs with pypy. Pypy should give at least similar performance as Rust but being still regular Python means there is a far bigger pool of devs able to maintain it.

Astral has shown us the way, but I think it's time to take control of our own destiny as Python devs.

petterroea last Thursday at 2:21 PM
How does this make sense
caidan last Thursday at 5:18 PM
Booooooooooooooooooo
cesarvarela last Thursday at 2:54 PM
So vite.dev is next.
zoobab last Thursday at 2:10 PM
Undisclosed amount?
dec0dedab0de last Thursday at 4:27 PM
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.

yoyohello13 last Thursday at 3:09 PM
Oh no! This is actually terrible. Get ready for "premium tooling only available in Codex(TM)".
kelvinjps10 yesterday at 3:58 AM
This is feeling weird, like now if the AI bubble pops it will bring core technologies like runtimes (bun) and package managers (astral) now what's next? vite?
butterlettuce last Thursday at 2:52 PM
This is where POTUS should step in and stop this sale. Not cool.
am17an last Thursday at 2:32 PM
Welp, back to pip
wolvesechoes last Thursday at 5:13 PM
Another HN darling falls from grace. But hey, the next one will not follow the same steps!
fud101 yesterday at 3:04 AM
Well this sucks. So the most evil new company has acquired the most exciting 'open' source company. The vibes are about to get bad. Hopefully this speeds up the next phase of AI destroying the economy and everything good about tech.
fantasizr last Thursday at 3:59 PM
should I be glad I never got off pip?
atoav last Thursday at 10:19 PM
Unfortunate, wince I trust Astral, and can't say the same about openAI
0dayman last Thursday at 5:58 PM
won't increase your subscriptions, people are dropping out in the millions and no one wants jewPT
OutOfHere last Thursday at 3:54 PM
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.
EddieLomax last Thursday at 3:44 PM
Goddamnit
fithisux last Thursday at 3:23 PM
Astral to Join OpenAI (astral.sh) OpenAI to Acquire Astral(https://openai.com/index/openai-to-acquire-astral/)

what can I say?

Imustaskforhelp last Thursday at 2:03 PM
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 last Thursday at 1:48 PM
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.

FergusArgyll last Thursday at 1:42 PM
Hn's favorite company meets hn's most hated company.

Hilarity in the comments will ensue

throwa356262 last Thursday at 1:47 PM
"Sir, you now have twice as many private jets as Dario"

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

elAhmo last Thursday at 7:30 PM
Terrible news for Python ecosystem. I guess the money was too much to reject this ridiculous offer.
ranaaditya last Thursday at 4:31 PM
congrats team !
Hackbraten last Thursday at 1:44 PM
Don’t you dare enshittify my uv.
ajkjk last Thursday at 5:30 PM
what a shame
crimecanada last Thursday at 8:53 PM
good job
prodigycorp last Thursday at 1:52 PM
Codex team now has the legends who created Pyright and UV/Ruff/Ty.
drcongo last Thursday at 2:46 PM
This is the worst possible news. Fantastic team at Astral joining a bunch of scumbag scammers at "Open"AI.
jmux last Thursday at 3:37 PM
nooo
amai last Thursday at 5:25 PM
WAT? uv now belongs to Trump mega-donors? That is not good for the Python ecosystem.
ChrisArchitect last Thursday at 2:19 PM
Hamuko last Thursday at 1:54 PM
So, any good alternatives to uv?
mkrd last Thursday at 5:51 PM
Ah shit, back to poetry
CRConrad yesterday at 9:43 AM
"Join"... Sigh. Disgusting LI-slop language. Say "be acquired" when you mean "be acquired".
patcon yesterday at 12:36 AM
well, fuck.
acedTrex last Thursday at 1:57 PM
damn it, another one bites the dust sadly
muin_kr yesterday at 7:05 PM
[dead]
JulianPembroke last Thursday at 7:37 PM
[dead]
ryguz last Thursday at 7:58 PM
[dead]
camgitt last Thursday at 4:35 PM
[dead]
tgiba yesterday at 10:00 AM
[dead]
aplomb1026 last Thursday at 5:31 PM
[dead]
rodchalski last Thursday at 7:01 PM
[dead]
minnzen last Thursday at 3:26 PM
[dead]
latand6 yesterday at 7:21 AM
[dead]
imadch last Thursday at 3:14 PM
[dead]
SudoSage last Thursday at 4:52 PM
[dead]
A7OM last Thursday at 1:11 PM
[dead]
jeff_antseed last Thursday at 4:07 PM
[dead]
riteshyadav02 last Thursday at 1:53 PM
[dead]
boxingdog last Thursday at 5:07 PM
[dead]
qcautomation last Thursday at 3:32 PM
[dead]
throwaway613746 last Thursday at 2:37 PM
[dead]
huflungdung last Thursday at 6:06 PM
[dead]
catlover76 last Thursday at 2:15 PM
[dead]
Heer_J last Thursday at 2:16 PM
[dead]
gethwhunter34 last Thursday at 3:17 PM
[dead]
moralestapia last Thursday at 1:33 PM
[flagged]
WhereIsTheTruth last Thursday at 1:41 PM
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 last Thursday at 1:43 PM
Congrats!

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

holografix last Thursday at 1:46 PM
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?