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mdasenlast Thursday at 7:54 PM10 repliesview on HN

This is good, but it doesn't necessarily mean that Tailwind is out of the financial difficulty that we talked about yesterday. You can sponsor Tailwind for as little as $6,000/year. 29 companies were already sponsoring Tailwind including 16 companies at the $60,000/year level. Maybe Google AI Studio has decided to shell out a lot more, but it could also be a relatively small sponsorship compared to the $1.1M in sponsorships that Tailwind is already getting. Google has deep pockets and could easily just say "f-it, we're betting on AI coding and this tool helps us make UIs and $2M/year is nothing compared to what we're spending on AI." It's also possible that the AI Studio team has a small discretionary budget and is giving Tailwind $6,000/year.

It's good, but it's important to read this as "they're offering some money" and not "Tailwind CSS now doesn't have financial issues because they have a major sponsor." This could just be a 1-5% change in Tailwind's budget. We don't know.

And that's not to take away from their sponsorship, but on the heels of the discussion yesterday it's important to note that Tailwind was already being sponsored by many companies and still struggling. This is a good thing, but it's hard to know if this moves the needle a bunch on Tailwind's problems. Maybe it'll be the start of more companies offering Tailwind money and that'd be great.


Replies

ricardobeatlast Thursday at 10:05 PM

No ill will towards the team, but isn’t it almost absurd that a CSS library is funded to the tune of 1m+ yearly and is still in financial difficulty? It is technically complete. There is no major research work or churn like in React, no monstruous complexity like Webpack.

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naedishlast Thursday at 11:36 PM

If the description for each tier is correct then it seems like Google AI Studio is an Ambassador only ($2,500 per month). This tier includes your company logo on the homepage. The Partner tier ($5,000 per month) includes placing your logo at the top of the sponsor list and Google AI Studio is at the end of the sponsor list.

Edit

Looking at the tailwind.css repo[1] they are a Partner. Not sure why they are at the end of the sponsor list in that case. Though now I look at the bottom of the sponsors page I see they repeat the Sponsors again at the bottom and directly indicate each companies support tier.

1. https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss.com/commit/7a98b...

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northern-lightslast Thursday at 8:25 PM

It seems to be in Google's interest to keep Tailwind CSS afloat.

Tailwind CSS is alive -> New / existing projects keep using Tailwind CSS -> more code for Gemini to train upon -> better and fancier UIs being created through Gemini -> popularity and usage of Gemini doesn't go down

Of course this applies to any other LLM provider too but I guess Google saw this opportunity first.

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Arcurulast Thursday at 8:14 PM

For others, the page where this info comes from is https://tailwindcss.com/sponsor

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throwaway-aws9last Thursday at 9:30 PM

The lesson here is to always offer a larger tier than what your largest subscribers have.

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codegeeklast Thursday at 10:49 PM

Not $6000/Year but $60,000/Year. Not sure if you missed a 0. Google AI is listed as a Partner sponsor which costs $5000/Month or $60,000/Year. Since Adam's audio and twitter post went viral, he has aded about 5 partner sponsors netting total of additional $300k/Year right there. And a few other smaller sponsors as well.

Overall, this has been a win for Adam and Tailwind.

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baggy_troughlast Thursday at 7:57 PM

I would think Tailwind could keep 3 engineers around if they are getting sponsorship of over $1m/yr.

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moralestapialast Thursday at 9:06 PM

>Tailwind is out of the financial difficulty

Tailwind is not under financial difficulty, like, at all.

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