OpenAI To Buy Astral To Compete With Anthropic In AI Coding Tools

OpenAI has announced plans to acquire Astral, a fast-growing Python developer tools startup. The company’s focus is now on AI-powered coding and to directly compete with rivals like Anthropic.

The financial details of the deal, which was announced on 19 March 2026, have not been disclosed yet, and it is subject to regulatory approvals. But once completed, Astral’s team and tools will be integrated into OpenAI’s coding platform, Codex.

The Growth Of Codex And The Shift In Strategy

In a short time since its launch, OpenAI’s Codex platform has seen rapid adoption, with over 2 million weekly active users. Usage has grown nearly five times since the start of the year.

The company now wants to move beyond just generating code. Its future goal is to build AI systems that can handle the entire software development process, including planning, testing, and maintaining code. Astral’s tools fit naturally into this strategy.

Not just Astral, OpenAI has been actively expanding through acquisitions. It acquired AI startup io in a $6.4 billion deal last year. Earlier this month, it announced plans to buy cybersecurity firm Promptfoo, after already acquiring healthcare startup Torch in January.

Competition Is Intensifying

Rival Anthropic is already close to a $20 billion annual revenue run rate and has built strong trust among developers with its Claude Code tools. At the same time, another competitor, Cursor, is reportedly looking to raise funds at a $50 billion valuation, showing how fast this space is heating up.

This is why the Astral deal becomes important. Astral is known for building widely used open-source Python tools, such as:

• uv for dependency and environment management

• Ruff for fast code linting and formatting

• ty for type checking

These tools are already used in millions of projects globally and have seen hundreds of millions of downloads per month. Despite the acquisition, OpenAI has said it will continue to support Astral’s open-source tools to avoid any disruptions to the large number of developers using them.

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Why Does This Matter?

This deal shows AI companies aren’t just about chatbots like ChatGPT anymore; they are building full ecosystems for developers and businesses.

The impact is likely to be felt by countries like India as well. Since India has a large developer base and strong Python adoption in areas like AI, fintech, and SaaS, this could help startups and large IT companies build products faster and increase productivity.

Sources:

The Hindu

Moneycontrol

EY