Comment by bblaylock

Comment by bblaylock 16 hours ago

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This reads more like Anthropic wanted to hire Jarred and Jarred wants to work with AI rather than build a Saas product around bun. I doubt it has anything to do with what is best for bun the project. Considering bun always seemed to value performance more than all else, the only real way for them to continue pursuing that value would be to move into the actual js engine design. This seems like a good pivot for Jarred personally and likely a loss for bun.

simonw 16 hours ago

It doesn't read like that to me at all. This reads to me like Anthropic realizing that they have $1bn in annual revenue from Claude Code that's dependent on Bun, and acquiring Bun is a great and comparatively cheap way to remove any risk from that dependency.

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  • bblaylock 16 hours ago

    I haven't had any issue moving projects between node, bun, and deno for years. I don't agree that the risk of bun failing as a company affects anthropic at all. Bun has a permissible license that anthropic could fork from, anthropic likely knew that oven had a long runway and isn't in immediate danger, and switching to a new js cli tool is not the huge lift most people think it is in 2025. Why pay for something you are already getting for free and can expect to keep getting for free for at least four years, and buy for less if it fails later?

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  • _jab 16 hours ago

    This argument doesn’t make much sense to me. Claude Code, like any product, presumably has dozens of external dependencies. What’s so special about Bun specifically that motivated an acquisition?

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    • cobolcomesback 16 hours ago

      A dependency that forms the foundation of your build process, distribution mechanisms, and management of other dependencies is a materially different risk than a dependency that, say, colorizes terminal output.

      I’m doubtful that alone motivated an acquisition, it was surely a confluence of factors, but Bun is definitely a significant dependency for Claude Code.

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      • rvnx 15 hours ago

        MIT code, let Bun continue develop it, once project is abandoned hire the developers.

        If they don't want to maintain; GitHub fork with more motivated people.

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        • cobolcomesback 15 hours ago

          > MIT code, let Bun continue develop it, once project is abandoned hire the developers.

          Why go through the pain of letting it be abandoned and then hiring the developers anyway, when instead you can hire the developers now and prevent it from being abandoned in the first place (and get some influence in project priorities as well)?

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    • almosthere 16 hours ago

      If they found themselves pushing PRs to bun that got ignored and they wanted to speed up priority on things they needed, if the acq was cheap enough, this is the way to do it.

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  • Karrot_Kream 16 hours ago

    I'm also curious if Anthropic was worried about the funding situation for Bun. The easiest way to allay any concerns about longevity is to just acquire them outright.

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  • rco8786 15 hours ago

    Except bun is OSS, so they could have just forked if something happened

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    • square_usual 15 hours ago

      It's not easy to "just" fork a huge project like Bun. You'll need to commit several devs to it, and they'll have to have Zig and JSC experience, a hard combo to hire for. In many ways, this is an acquihire.

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thatoneengineer 16 hours ago

Nah, it reads like the normal logic behind the consulting model for open source monetization, except that Bun was able to make it work with just one customer. Good for them, though it comes with some risks, especially when structured as an acquisition.

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