AI Daily: OpenAI Targets Developer Tooling Startup Astral in Battle Against Anthropic

OpenAI just made one of its boldest counter moves against rival artificial intelligence (AI) firm Anthropic. OpenAI has officially announced it will acquire Astral, a software startup behind popular open-source Python developer tools. The deal is set to integrate Astral’s engineering team into OpenAI’s Codex division, strengthening its developer-focused capabilities.

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OpenAI Codex Gets a Python Power-Up

OpenAI announced its plans to buy Astral on March 19, 2026, with financial terms undisclosed and regulatory approval still pending. The deal is expected to strengthen Codex, OpenAI’s AI coding assistant, by integrating Astral’s Python tools (uv, Ruff, and ty), which support millions of developers with package management, linting, code formatting, and type checking, respectively.

Together, these tools could help Codex move beyond code generation toward systems capable of planning changes, modifying codebases, testing, and maintaining software over time. The AI company also disclosed that Codex now serves more than 2 million weekly active users, a threefold increase in user growth and a fivefold jump in usage since the start of 2026. The acquisition plan reinforces OpenAI’s broader push toward agentic AI systems that can act autonomously and complete multi-step tasks.

OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cursor Battle for Developer Share

The new deal comes amid an intensifying battle for dominance in AI development. OpenAI’s chief of applications, Fidji Simo, described Anthropic’s competitive pressure as a “wake-up call,” calling for a stronger push to win back developers and enterprise clients.

The urgency is reflected in recent market data by Ramp, which reported that Anthropic now captures over 70% of spending among companies newly adopting AI tools. OpenAI’s plan to acquire Astral mirrors Anthropic’s earlier move in Dec. 2025, when the rival firm acquired Bun, a JavaScript runtime already embedded in Claude Code.

Competition goes beyond the two AI giants. On the same day as OpenAI’s announcement, rival Cursor unveiled Composer 2, an AI agent for handling lengthy coding tasks autonomously, following its Dec. 2025 acquisition of code review startup Graphite to strengthen its full workflow capabilities. OpenAI said it will keep Astral’s tools open source while exploring deeper integration with Codex.

Which AI Companies are Going Public in 2026?

Several AI companies are expected to go public in 2026, with the most anticipated IPOs including OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks, and Cohere. OpenAI is rumored to be targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion, while Anthropic is preparing for a public debut at a valuation between $350 billion and $380 billion.

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