Less Microsoft and a native UI. Microsoft is already making it hard to use alternative releases of VSCode like Codium by restricting them from using their extension marketplace and things like Pylance (their newer, more advanced proprietary Python LSP that replaces Pyright). Try to even download a .vsix extension from Microsoft’s site - you can’t because they don’t offer the ability to anymore without VSCode

Zed also openly integrates with LSP so you can use servers like basedpyright and get a more featurefull editor than Code

edit: I realise I sound like a Zed salesman but I really like it lol