Ask HN: How is a company like Astral viable, financially?

7 ashwinsundar 2 6/24/2025, 3:54:34 AM
First of all, let me start by saying that I love uv and have changed all my Python projects to use it. It simplifies dependency management in a transparent and easy-to-use way.

However, after reading this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44357411), I began to wonder - who is this company 'Astral' behind all this?

https://astral.sh/about

I read their about, and it sounds great and I'm all for it. But they are still a company, and I presume they want to make money somehow. Otherwise they'll stop being a company, and I don't want that to happen because I really like uv.

But I also want to know if there is some plan to eventually get money out of me, an innocent uv-user. Is it a mistake to become too reliant on uv/Astral? Or can I hope the relationship will be more like GitHub's (pretty happy overall, it's an industry standard, I toss a few bucks their way for various services, although it is becoming less usable...)

Comments (2)

OccamsMirror · 4h ago
They're not! But hopefully, they will be. How? No one knows. When? Soon!

I assume the plan is similar to how Hashicorp went. Which while never turning a profit was still acquired by IBM for a cool 6.4 billion dollars.

I love that product companies like this can exist. But it does surprise me.

Hackbraten · 5h ago