Three Weeks After Acquiring Windsurf, Cognition Offers Staff The Exit Door

Cognition, nan AI coding startup that acquired rival institution Windsurf 3 weeks ago, laid disconnected 30 labor past week and is offering buyouts to nan astir 200 remaining labor connected nan team, reports The Information.

This is nan latest bout of whiplash that Windsurf labor person faced aft a tumultuous agelong for nan company. The startup was initially almost acquired by OpenAI, past mislaid its CEO, co-founder, and investigation leads to Google successful a $2.4 cardinal woody known arsenic a reverse-acquihire (where Google hired nan cardinal talent alternatively than buying nan company), earlier yet getting acquired by Cognition.  

At nan clip of nan acquisition, Cognition stated that 100% of Windsurf labor would person financial compensation arsenic portion of nan woody and stressed that nan institution was excited to bring connected Windsurf’s “world-class people” to create top-notch coding tools. 

Now, it’s becoming clear that Windsurf’s intelligence property, not its talent, was nan existent buy.

According to an email The Information viewed, labor were fixed until August 10 to determine whether they want to return nan buyout, which amounts to 9 months of salary. Those who take to enactment are reportedly required to walk six days astatine nan agency and timepiece 80+ hr weeks – draconian conditions that person go table stakes among workers astatine apical AI firms. 

“We don’t judge successful work-life balance—building nan early of package engineering is simply a ngo we each attraction truthful profoundly astir that we couldn’t perchance abstracted nan two,” wrote Cognition CEO Scott Wu successful nan email.

TechCrunch has reached retired to Cognition for much details.