Windsurf Ceo Opens Up About ‘very Bleak’ Mood Before Cognition Deal

Days aft AI coding startup Windsurf announced that it’s being acquired by Cognition, Windsurf startup Jeff Wang took to X to connection much specifications astir nan play and uncertainty astir nan deal.

Windsurf was antecedently reported to beryllium successful acquisition talks pinch OpenAI, but that woody fell apart, pinch Google DeepMind alternatively hiring nan startup’s CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and immoderate of its apical researchers. Google would reportedly licence Windsurf’s exertion arsenic portion of nan $2.4 cardinal woody — but not return an equity liking successful nan company.

This looked for illustration nan latest successful the inclination of “reverse acquihires,” successful which ample tech companies activity to debar antitrust scrutiny by hiring cardinal startup squad members and licensing their technology, alternatively than acquiring startups outright.

But what happens to nan startups and nan labor who get near behind? As we discussed connected the latest section of Equity, 1 startup laminitis compared nan departing Windsurf executives to a skipper abandoning his unit aboard a sinking ship. 

Wang, who had been Windsurf’s caput of business, became nan company’s interim CEO aft Mohan’s departure. In his station connected X, he offered immoderate sympathy to Mohan and Chen, who he described arsenic “ awesome founders” successful a business that “must person been difficult for them arsenic well.” 

Still, Wang recounted an all-hands gathering connected Friday, June 11, wherever astir squad members were expecting to perceive astir nan OpenAI acquisition. Instead, he had to stock nan news astir nan Google woody and resulting departures.

“The temper was very bleak,” Wang said. “Some group were upset astir financial outcomes aliases colleagues leaving, while others were worried astir nan future. A fewer were successful tears, and nan Q&A had been understandably hostile.”

In Wang’s view, though nan institution “had mislaid immoderate awesome group and taken a superior rustle to morale,” it still had “all of our IP, product, and beardown talent including an fantabulous [go-to-market] machine.” So Windsurf could still effort to raise much money, sell, aliases conscionable support going.

That evening, however, Wang heard from Cognition executives Scott Wu and Russell Kaplan, and he said Windsurf activity “took nan Cognition attack very earnestly from nan commencement and launched correct into negotiations.” In his telling, what followed was a frantic play of discussions pinch Cognition, while considering inbound liking from different imaginable acquirers and gathering pinch Windsurf’s remaining engineers to person them not to leave. (And arsenic each that was happening, “the timeline was exploding pinch memes and commentary.”)

The 2 companies were a bully fit, Wang argued, successful portion because of complementary teams.

“While they had overinvested successful engineering, they had frankly underinvested successful GTM and Marketing, and our teams successful those functions are thing short of world class,” he said. “On nan different hand, we now were missing a Core Engineering team, and there’s nary amended group of AI engineers than nan lineup Cognition has assembled.”

Plus, Wang said he and Wu (pictured together above) were aligned connected nan request to “take attraction of each Windsurf employees.”

“That resulted successful a cardinal portion of nan deal: structuring it to springiness a payout to each employee, to waive each cliffs, and to accelerate each vesting for Windsurf equity,” he said.

The acquisition statement was apparently signed astatine 9:30am connected Monday morning, announced to nan squad soon afterwards astatine different all-hands, past announced to nan public soon aft that.

In an question and reply pinch Bloomberg, Wang described that Friday all-hands arsenic “probably nan worst time of 250 people’s lives,” followed Monday by “probably nan champion day.”