Codeium’s Windsurf Takes Coding to the Next Level with Anthropic Claude Integration

Codeium, an AI coding platform, has integrated Anthropic’s Claude into Windsurf, a collaborative AI-native Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The platform, combined with Codeium’s Cascade AI agent, helps developers write code and manage complex codebases efficiently.

According to Codeium, Windsurf’s launch resulted in rapid adoption, with over 10,000 users signing up within two days and reaching hundreds of thousands by the second week. The company has also observed high user retention, with developers switching to Windsurf full-time.

“Claude powers some of the reasoning and planning parts of Cascade,” said Anshul Ramachandran, a representative from Codeium. “When a developer is working, Claude looks at everything that’s happened in their session and figures out the best next steps, maintaining that full context throughout the conversation.”

Codeium, which serves over 800,000 active users and 1,000 enterprise customers, mentioned that nearly half of all new committed code in companies using its platform is generated by its AI tools. 

Jeff Wang of Codeium attributed a 38% improvement in developers accepting AI suggestions to advancements in codebase understanding.

The Claude-powered Cascade uses an extensive context window to analyse development sessions, offering suggestions and maintaining a seamless collaboration experience. This feature addresses challenges such as speed and understanding enterprise-scale codebases, which are key for AI systems in production environments.

Codeium has also integrated Claude’s multimodal features into Windsurf and Cascade, enabling functionalities such as image inputs. “We made ours fast enough to feel like a real-time collaboration with the developer,” said Ramachandran.

By introducing Windsurf, Codeium aims to make software development accessible to a broader audience. “Anybody can be a developer with this,” Wang said, sharing examples of non-technical users leveraging the platform to create applications.

The initiative aligns with Codeium’s belief in amplifying developers’ capabilities through AI. Ramachandran said , “AI won’t reduce the number of developers. It will create more, working in partnership with AI to build bigger things faster.”

Launched in late 2024, Windsurf brings together AI copilots and independent AI agents through a feature called “AI Flows.” Built on a fork of Visual Studio Code, it offers a familiar interface with added AI capabilities.

The key component, Cascade, is an AI coding assistant providing context-aware support, editing multiple files, and enabling real-time collaboration. The “Flows” feature lets the AI analyse several files and contexts at once, ensuring a shared understanding of the project and helping developers stay focused and productive.

Codeium recently introduced a new update called Wave 1, which improves Cascade’s capabilities with Cascade Memories and allows for custom behavior rules. It also introduces automated terminal commands with a tiered system for command execution.

Anthropic recently rolled out Claude Haiku 3.5 on Claude.ai, the latest iteration of its smallest and fastest model. Meanwhile, Codeium raised $150 million in a Series C funding round, propelling its valuation to $1.25 billion and making it a unicorn.

Codeium competitor, Cursor recently released version 0.43 introducing several new features. The update includes a new Composer UI in the sidebar with inline diffs, along with an early version of an agent in Composer that can pick its own context and use the terminal. 

It also adds the ability to generate git commit messages and provides file pill recommendations in chat and Composer. A new @Recommended feature in chat/Composer allows for semantic context search. 

The update also improves the image-dropping experience and includes several performance enhancements. A beta version of an upcoming bug finder feature was also included.