IMO it's a strategic misstep to try and create their own IDE with a fork of VS Code. I'm only going to consider AI Tools that integrate with my IDEs (primarily VS Code + Rider) as such my AI weapons of choice are now: augmentcode.com (fave), GitHub Copilot, Gemini Code Assist and now Claude Code now that I can use it with my pro plan.
AugmentCode is really good. It has mostly replaced my coding for the past 2 weeks. I am "reduced" to prompting, reviewing, and re-prompting.
And I can do this in parallel, working on 2-3 tasks at the same time (using GoLand, AndroidStudio and JetBrains). As long as I can context switch and keep the context in my head.
Yep it's off to a great start with its early mover advantage but IMO their days on top are numbered with every major player behind the premier coding models (and major IDE vendors) iterating hard on their own integrated AI coding agents, after which I suspect Cursor's choice for using a proprietary IDE is going to look dated.
That tells you nothing about their operating expenses (I'd bet they're operating in the red), and if you divide that by their cheapest available plan, that's at most 1.5 million paying users (probably way less).
