Microsoft and Google prepared assisted coding announcements at their developer conferences in the period, targeting a category where model makers moved first.
The contest over that category has an explanation beyond market size. Coding tools are a gateway to the cloud: whoever chooses where the assistant runs tends to drag along where code executes and is stored.
Cloud platforms hold a structural advantage in that contest, which is already being inside the company, with a signed contract, integrated corporate identity and single billing.
Model makers hold another, which is controlling the model itself and being able to shape the product around what it does best, without depending on a public interface.
For anyone choosing tools, the competition is good and the criterion stays the same: measure completed tasks end to end on the real codebase, including time to install dependencies, run tests and fix, rather than the quality of the suggestion in isolation.