[OJFord]

That's an incomplete story though, 'revenue has plummeted due to LLMs', 'revenue is from people sponsoring the project', so... what, people that formerly liked and sponsored Tailwind stopped, figuring they can just ask AI now?

Bit surprised that would have happened in significant volume (I'd have thought the LLM using non-sponsors would have far more overlap with the prior non-sponsors) but maybe.

[loktarogar]

Their offering was paid-for bundles of components and templates using tailwind, which they primarily drove traffic to via their documentation, which wasn't getting visited as much anymore because people just used AI.

[dan15]

Fewer people view their site (since their questions can be answered by LLMs) which means their paid services (Tailwind Plus and links to sponsors) get fewer views and thus fewer purchases.

[inandoutflux]

You forget turnover. Sponsorship isn't a subscription with much value after you built your product. You have a number of people coming in and out on top of those staying put, and those former were probably the most important metric.

AI spewing answers out of the magic box (or even just one-shotting with zero oversight) means developers do not go to the actual website for documentation, do not share as many issues as much and do not talk about the experience of working with tailwind as much - AI performance discourse takes that attention. This means less in-flow, which means the line of stability will be lower even in a vacuum where people have no particular reason to increase the out-flow.

And yet, this isn't a vacuum. I am not arguing it's just that alone. I absolutely believe that people simply stopped valuing code altogether. Why pay for ready solutions when the beepity bopity boop handles custom implementation for you without you even having to ask too much? It's what the OP article here is saying, AI's love custom solutions.