I used it because of the integrated voice to text (since apple's built in dictation is terrible) but stopped using it when i replaced it with superwhisper

It's not like this is where they started: Warp dates back to 2020 and probably had an initial strategy of "just build a really nice, fast terminal emulator and figure out the money later", which honestly isn't the worst idea in the world.

The AI integration only came years later, and they probably figured maybe they could compete in the space with Cursor, repl.it, etc. And then Claude Code came and just devoured everything, while Google bought Windsurf, Microsoft pushes Copilot, and OpenAI has Codex (while at the same time kitty and ghostty also built really nice, fast terminal emulators)

I agree I don't think they have any real shot and I certainly wouldn't recommend investing in their next round, but it's not like this was their plan all along, they went where the winds were blowing.