JetBrains pitches independence in AI

JetBrains is recasting its AI pitch around ownership. In an interview published May 22 by The New Stack, Mikhail Vink, JetBrains’ vice president of business development, said the company is now the only major independent vendor left in AI coding tools after rivals aligned with larger platforms or model providers. The argument comes as the market around AI coding assistants is consolidating. The New Stack said Cursor’s parent, Anysphere, has tied future model training to xAI infrastructure, while Windsurf was split earlier between Google, which took key talent and a technology license, and Cognition, which acquired the product, brand, IP and business. Microsoft Copilot, Vink said, has long been linked to Microsoft and OpenAI. (thenewstack.io) JetBrains is using that backdrop to sell portability. Vink told The New Stack that “there is some kind of lab or some kind of hyperscaler behind every tool,” and said JetBrains retains the option to work with “whatever models and agents we like.” ### Why is JetBrains talking about independence now? May 22 was the clearest statement yet of a message JetBrains has been building across its AI product rollout: that customers may want coding tools not anchored to one cloud, one lab or one proprietary stack. (thenewstack.io) Vink made that case in remarks at Google Cloud Next, according to The New Stack. JetBrains’ own annual report makes the same point in broader terms. (thenewstack.io) The privately held company said its independence lets it build an “open ecosystem” and support developers regardless of the language, framework, large language model or agent they choose. ### What does JetBrains say customers get from that? Junie, JetBrains’ first-party coding agent, defaults to Gemini Flash through a Google Cloud partnership but can also run on models from Anthropic and OpenAI, according to The New Stack. (thenewstack.io) Vink said internal JetBrains teams use Claude Code, Codex and Junie interchangeably depending on the task. JetBrains has paired that model-flexibility pitch with governance tooling. (jetbrains.com) On March 24, the company announced JetBrains Central, which it described as an “open, AI-native system” for software production and a control and execution plane for agent-driven work across IDEs, CLIs, pipelines and other tools. ### How is JetBrains funding that strategy? (thenewstack.io) JetBrains has stayed private and profitable, and Vink said that matters. He told The New Stack the company never raised venture capital, has been profitable since year one, and used its longstanding IDE business to fund its AI push. He also cited 16 million users and more than 300,000 commercial customers. JetBrains said separately in its 2026 annual highlights that its AI tools reached a six-figure active paid user count in the fourth quarter of 2025. (blog.jetbrains.com) The company also said adoption of its AI offerings rose in every quarter of 2025. ### Where does this leave the broader coding-tools market? The New Stack framed JetBrains’ pitch as a response to a market in which AI coding products are increasingly bundled with model labs, hyperscalers or strategic buyers. (thenewstack.io) That framing is visible in JetBrains Central as well: the platform is designed to connect JetBrains tools and third-party tools with external agents including Claude Agent, Codex and Gemini CLI. (jetbrains.com) March 24 also set the next milestone. JetBrains said JetBrains Central would begin an early access program in the second quarter of 2026 with a limited number of design partners, giving the company a near-term venue to test its model-neutral and governance-focused pitch with enterprise teams. (blog.jetbrains.com) (thenewstack.io)