Cirrus Labs' Journey and New Chapter with OpenAI

In 2017, I founded Cirrus Labs with the ambition of emulating the pioneering spirit of Bell Labs, tackling exciting engineering challenges, and inadvertently creating a business. Our mission was to empower engineers with innovative tools and environments, particularly in the cloud computing era. The name 'Cirrus' was chosen to reflect our high-reaching aspirations, akin to the cirrus clouds.

We thrived without external capital, allowing us to remain deeply connected to the engineering problems we aimed to solve. Over nine years, we made significant strides in continuous integration, build tools, and virtualization. Notably, in 2018, we launched what we believe was the first SaaS CI/CD system supporting Linux, Windows, and macOS, enabling teams to use their own cloud. By 2022, we developed Tart, which became the leading virtualization solution for Apple Silicon.

As we step into 2026, the era of agentic engineering is upon us, demanding new tools and environments for both human and agentic engineers. This evolution made our decision to join OpenAI a natural progression, aligning with our mission to innovate at the forefront of engineering workflows.

Joining OpenAI's Agent Infrastructure team allows us to continue our mission on a larger scale, contributing to the development of next-generation engineering tools. We are excited to announce that we will relicense our tools, including Tart, Vetu, and Orchard, under a more permissive license and cease charging licensing fees. However, we will no longer accept new customers for Cirrus Runners, though existing contracts will be honored, and Cirrus CI will be discontinued by June 1, 2026.

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who supported Cirrus Labs, from users to contributors. Building Cirrus Labs has been a remarkable journey, and we look forward to this new chapter with OpenAI.