The biggest miss from Tailwind is ignoring the rest of the ecosystem. Rightly or wrongly, everyone has moved on to using shadcn's system for components. Tailwind hasn't. Tailwind has excellent components available through Plus which are worth paying for but they're not available where people are, which pushes people towards other libraries built on top of Tailwind. I have paid for Tailwind Plus and I like their Catalyst UI and I have used it on a project but it's a pain to use compared to alternatives, so, I don't bother.
I'd go as far as to guess that their revenue isn't down due to AI but because of their lifetime access model combined with shadcn's registry system being much easier to use.
> everyone has moved on to using shadcn's system for components
I played around with shadcn for a new project a year or so ago, decided I really didn't like their fundamental approach of copying code (that now I have to maintain) into my code base. So I ended up using something else (DaisyUI), which has been reasonably nice so far.
I'm just one person (and one not super plugged into the frontend scene), but "everyone" feels like a gross overestimation. I would guess it's not even a majority.
I tried ShadCN then quickly ported everything over to Mantine. A bit of config magic later, I can quickly whip out functional UIs faster than I can think of features.
I like this prediction and it would be a good fit. Vercel can also monetize existing traffic much more broadly than tailwind can with just tailwind plus.
I wish Adam had addressed the impact of competition in a bit more detail.
Shadcn has definitely taken a big chunk, the premium ecosystem around Shadcn is absolutely exploding. I know. I run https://www.shadcnblocks.com and we saw huge month on month growth in revenue for the entire year.
Even with strong headwinds from AI, I expect our revenue to continue increasing throughout 2026.
I'd go as far as to guess that their revenue isn't down due to AI but because of their lifetime access model combined with shadcn's registry system being much easier to use.
Prediction: Tailwind acquired by Vercel.