With the reports of Open AI looking to buy AI IDE Windsurf, the conversation is shifting about owning the full stack. For me, this has been obvious since day one. Model companies play a crucial role in AI infrastructure, but for most end users, the application layer is going to be the differentiator for them. At some point, models will get so cheap and an abundance of different ones where choosing them matters less for general use cases.

Application UX and adopting behaviors has always been the biggest blocker to AI adoption, which is why I believe design is more important than ever. It’s one of the primary reasons I decided to join Atlassian to work on Rovo; many exciting UX opportunities for AI-first interfaces.