21 ms·

Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

502 points by alazsengul 1y ago

xnx 1y ago
Sounds like one of those "Two turkeys don't make an eagle." situations.
samyok 1y ago
Important context from the tweet: > This transaction is structured so that 100% of Windsurf employees will participate financially. They will also have all vesting cliffs waived and will receive fully accelerated vesting for their work to date.
- asadotzler 1y ago
  Not important, marketing speak unless it comes with numbers. "We'll split 100% of $10 across every employee" is just as much a possibility as the windfall their PR team has convinced you of.
- oytis 1y ago
  So they will get stocks of a company that ceases to exist basically
akavi 1y ago
Is this purely the rump company left over from the Google pseudo-acquistion? Or does this mean that deal fell through? Does this represent confirmation that there was no pro-rata compensation to common share holders in the Google deal? I just have so many questions.
- xnx 1y ago
  And what is Google "paying $2.4 billion in license fees" to use Windsurf's technology for, and to who? Does Windsurf have any technology?
  - mattlondon 1y ago
    I suspect it is more a "licence" for the things in the staff's heads for those who were poached.
    - whamlastxmas 1y ago
      And this highlights why intellectual property is really gross to me
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - mritchie712 1y ago
    not sure of windsurf's ToS, but Google could be after the usage data (e.g. did the user accept the suggested edit? if not, what did they change it to? etc.)
- lunarboy 1y ago
  Windsurf founding team is already at Google
neural_thing 1y ago
Galaxy brain move by cognition
annodomini2019 1y ago
What does this actually mean for the product? Huge fan of the plugin on Jetbrains products...
- k3nz0 1y ago
  Which plugin?
  - annodomini2019 1y ago
    The Windsurf plugin!
- williamzeng0 1y ago
  Transparently I'm a founder building a plugin that's like "Cursor for JetBrains IDEs", if you're an windsurf user you might like us: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/26860-sweep-ai https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/26860-sweep-ai
  - annodomini2019 1y ago
    How would you describe your stance towards security? I'm an enterprise user so it'd have to clear a high bar with our security team
    - williamzeng0 1y ago
      I think the two big things are privacy mode on by default and zero data retention by default. No code or prompts are stored unless you opt-in. We also have on-prem deployment options but it's much more expensive.
tibbydudeza 1y ago
What's left ???.
- kevindamm 1y ago
  The company was intact after key employees moved to Alphabet, and importantly there was a service contract to use Windsurf, so apparently Google will be paying Cognition, ultimately, now.
  - xnx 1y ago
    > there was a service contract to use Windsurf I wonder what the terms were there. Hard for me to imagine why Google would've included that in the deal.
    - kevindamm 1y ago
      I'm just speculating but you'd get to use the IP without needing to negotiate overmuch about it, if they're using GCP or can be retrofitted to then you could set prices at a discount but claim a market rate when discussing growth of usage, which is great at quarterly earnings report time.. or even just as an ease-of-transition to expand into Windsurf's existing user base? There are plenty of reasons, including negotiation leverage, optics, or even just appeasment to the founders or board that the original project doesn't get immediately destroyed.
- chews 1y ago
  the hosed employees that actually built a great product while their leadership sings "go on take the money and run" on their mega yacht.
  - barbazoo 1y ago
    Presumably the employees were compensated fairly for their work while they worked there?
    - 1y ago
jeanlucas 1y ago
This is so confusing
makin 1y ago
I was a bit confused as to what "Cognition" was, but they're the makers of Devin (edit: that just got added to the title, for reference), so that makes sense. Just buying the competition, the only surprise is they had more money to spend than the big ones.
- handfuloflight 1y ago
  As far as I recall they were first to market with the "AI software engineer" promise.
- brentm 1y ago
  Well Google did also just pay $2.5B to license Windsurf in perpetuity. Cognition is probably spending a lot less than that for just whatever it left after that type of a deal. Remaining team members, etc.
  - mkagenius 1y ago
    > The acquisition includes Windsurf’s IP, product, trademark and brand, and strong business. So, Google will be paying $2.5B to Devin guys?
    - tedivm 1y ago
      No, as some portion of the $2.5b goes to Windsurf investors. Basically, Google bought the top talent from the company. This cash was used (according to articles I read this morning) in part to pay directly out to shareholders, and in exchange Google got the top talent from the company and a license for the software (probably mostly so their new talent didn't have to worry about NDA, non-compete, and patent challenges). Since this money went to shareholders, not to the company bank, and since top talent fleeing the company reduces the value of the company the overall value of Windsurf likely went down as part of the Google deal. This in turn likely made it cheap enough for the remainder to be purchased by Cognition.
  - xnx 1y ago
    > Google did also just pay $2.5B to license Windsurf in perpetuity Could there have been a clause that made this invalid in case of acquisition?
htrp 1y ago
so devin gets the leftover remains of windsurf to fix their agentic AI ide that wasn't working in the first place?
- rvz 1y ago
  yes.
- badgersnake 1y ago
  So some VCs got rinsed for Google’s leftovers.
  - bananapub 1y ago
    ok so it's not all bad then
  - fortysixpercent 1y ago
    VC's probably did fine. Their preferred shares get paid out on the dividend out of the Google 'license' fee. They might get some stock in Cognition as part of the acquisition of the remains of the company, but they've likely already been made whole and made a tidy profit on money invested in early rounds.
krat0sprakhar 1y ago
Wait, so Google picks up the talent, and Devin picks up the brand/product? This is so confusing!
- TIPSIO 1y ago
  I think it's safe to say don't use Windsurf. There are so many other options.
  - bicx 1y ago
    Unfortunately this seems to be true. I like Windsurf, but these days I just use it as a harness for running Claude Code while still retaining decent code completions.
    - OldfieldFund 1y ago
      Try Gemini CLI too. Free and I like it more than Claude Code.
      - artificialLimbs 1y ago
        How do you do the nice line-by-line (or section-by-section) before/after handling in a CLI tool?
        hobs 1y ago
        It has an external editor option (which I havent tried) the cli interface by default is pretty bad for medium to large code changes.
        stickfigure 1y ago
        Start with a clean git (even if you're just committing WIP locally). Run the tool. See the diffs in your IDE. They show up immediately in IntelliJ; use the "commit" pane. Same as if I had edited a bunch of files. Works fine.
      - 1y ago
rvz 1y ago
Must have been acquired for an extreme discount far from the $3B offer from OpenAI and Windsurf's (alleged) valuation of $1.3BN. Cognition being worth $4B with Devin being raced to zero by Claude Code also undercutting both Windsurf and Cursor have a very steep hill to climb. Having both Devin and Windsurf will just make them raise more money as they burn through their operational costs.
- seatac76 1y ago
  Google already paid $2.4B out of the $3B OpenAI deal, to what I imagine is Cognition now. Cognition must have spent low 100s of Millions max.
  - xnx 1y ago
    > Google already paid $2.4B This is unclear. $2.4B was for licensing and compensation. Why would Google have agreed to pay any significant amount to the Windsurf leftovers?
klohto 1y ago
Having been acquired by Google, there is always a leeway for the execs to take the employees with them. Google is a weak negotiator when they NEED something. On the other hand, I can imagine the execs taking Google golden handcuffs while trying to close the Cognition deal so the employees are made whole or maybe even on better terms than if they all went to Google.
isodev 1y ago
I’m really confused now. Also, is there really that much of a transformative difference between Windsurf and say OpenAI/Claude etc to warrant this crazy valuations?
- xnx 1y ago
  > crazy valuations I haven't seen anything to indicate what was paid for what's left of Windsurf.
  - isodev 1y ago
    I was also referring to the $2.5B Google paid. I can’t imagine what could possibly be the value they’re hoping to get
    - xnx 1y ago
      I'd love to learn more about that arrangement. Maybe Google's terms indicated that the "licensing fees" portion of "$2.4 billion in licensing fees and for compensation" are void if Windsurf gets acquired.
    - brulard 1y ago
      They got the top talent from there with the technology and they can continue on that or be used for other AI projects, right?
- guluarte 1y ago
  I'm also confused why Devin is worth billions
  - yoyohello13 1y ago
    For real. According to the marketing material. Couldn’t Devon just whip up a windsurf competitor in minutes?
    - iamleppert 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
alwinaugustin 1y ago
I use cursor
seatac76 1y ago
I hope Windsurf employees made some money in this whole kerfuffle. Would be terrible if they got left out of the payday.
- xnx 1y ago
  The ones that went to Google did! I don't know if the remaining employees are getting anything out of this acquisition.
- bradly 1y ago
  Very clearly called out in the article: > To that end, Jeff and I worked together to ensure that every single employee is treated with respect and well taken care of in this transaction. Specifically: > 100% of Windsurf employees will participate financially in this deal > 100% of Windsurf employees will have vesting cliffs waived for their work to date > 100% of Windsurf employees will receive fully accelerated vesting for their work to date
  - asadotzler 1y ago
    Not clearly called out. That call out is as clear as mud. We have no idea how much if any money the left behind employees will get and it's almost certainly far less than they would have got if their execs had held out for a deal that benefited everyone instead of their selfish and damaging to the entire startup ecosystem deal with Google.
jspann 1y ago
> 100% of Windsurf employees will participate financially in this deal > 100% of Windsurf employees will have vesting cliffs waived for their work to date > 100% of Windsurf employees will receive fully accelerated vesting for their work to date This sounds like a happy ending for the employees of Windsurf and a good deal for Cognition
- xnx 1y ago
  I'm not so sure. No telling what the purchase price was.
  - handfuloflight 1y ago
    Or how much of it is in Cognition stock.
- krasin 1y ago
  > This sounds like a happy ending for the employees of Windsurf and a good deal for Cognition The employees were robbed from having a big cash exit. Illiquid stock options from Windsurf were converted to illiquid stock options of Devin. What's worse is that the well is now poisoned. I would advise against joining startups from now on, because I think that there's no upside for employees anymore.
- frankfrank13 1y ago
  I don't think so. If your shares dropped 90% overnight you wouldn't be excited to have your vesting cliff waived
- whamlastxmas 1y ago
  Are the cliffs waived or accelerated? Makes me not trust this
- carimura 1y ago
  "work to" is key.. sounds like they aren't fully accelerating, just accelerating the time they worked that hasn't vested. So if you were hired a week ago, you get a week's worth of participation.
bravetraveler 1y ago
"Devin's on first" just doesn't work the same
vouaobrasil 1y ago
I wonder if we'll ever stop to ask ourselves if faster and faster output of software is actually a good thing for the world. Or will we just continue because it's just what we do nowadays in civilization to get ahead?
- hollowturtle 1y ago
  ahead of what? ahead of generating ugly and mostly usable masks over the same data. I'm in favor of AI but it seems to me that no one really stopped asking himself what real problems people have and how to actually fix them
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  I think so but not for the reason that you think. See, most closed source software really just pisses me off of ideological reasons, I just like to tinker with things and just having the possibility to do so by being provided the source code really helps my mind feel happy I guess. So I "vibe coded" a game that I used to play and some projects that I was curious about and I just wanted to tinker too. sure the game and code have bugs. Also with the help of AI, I feel like I can tinker about things that I don't know too much about and get a decent distance ahead. You might think that I am an AI advocate by reading this comment, but quite the contrary, I personally think that this is the only positive quality that AI helped in quite substantially. But at what cost? The job market has sunk a large hole and nobody's hiring the junior devs because everybody feels better doing some AI deals than hiring junior devs. My hunch is that senior devs are extremely in demand and are paid decently and so will retire on average early too. Then, there would be a huge gap b/w senior and juniors, because nobody's hiring the junior engineers now, so who will become the senior engineers if nobody got hired in the first place. I really hope that most companies actually realize that the AI game is quite a funny game really, most companies are too invested into it to realize that really, open source AI will catch up and there is just no moat with AI and building with AI or just doing stuff with AI isn't that meaningfully significant as they think it is as shown by recent studies.
  - gtsop 1y ago
    > that senior devs are extremely in demand Is this true? I am not seeing salaries rising, the demand seems to be met. But maybe I'm wrong.
agigao 1y ago
Devin/Cognition? All right, cancelled.
markbao 1y ago
Edit: nvm, see replies
- TZubiri 1y ago
  I think google is buying windsurf, they are leaving 100% of assets and some employees, and windsurf is buying that 100m in assets + taking the leftover employee liability. Microsoft poached the talent, devin Co. Picks up the scraps
- hadlock 1y ago
  "Acquiring" is often synonymous with "merger". Technically the surviving company acquires the other, but effectively it's a merger. Not always, but it's not uncommon to see two weaker companies merge in a competitive landscape to survive. It also counts as a liquidity event allowing employees some financial levers.
  - muzz 1y ago
    But these seem to be two well-funded companies? I.e. both with $100M+ funding within the last 12 months
- xnx 1y ago
  > How does this transaction make sense? The fact that it doesn't make sense with those numbers almost surely indicates those numbers are misleading. > Google paid a $2.4 billion licensing fee This is the reported number for licensing and compensation, but who knows what the terms really were. > Cognition’s valuation is $4 billion Doubtful
- john_moscow 1y ago
  They probably got what got left of it in a cashless deal. Basically, the shareholders got to exchange X shares in a fatally wounded company into Y shares in a still-alive startup. The economic sense depends on the ratio between X and Y, but if the board was close to panicking due to recent events, Cognition probably got a good deal.
aiCodeMonkey 1y ago
Uhh so where does the 2.4B go to? For the "licensing" rights but without equity to Windsurf? Does the whole 2.4B get distributed amongst the talent that Google acquired or is it shared amongst all Windsurf employees?
- asadotzler 1y ago
  Windsurf employees left behind by their executives get none of that Google money. It went to the selfish exec team and a few top employees that abandoned their teams and projects for Google's cash, and what didn't go to those selfish jerks went to Windsurf's investors. The rank and file that were abandoned by their leadership got totally screwed. Startup executives will never again be trusted to deal fairly with the people who spend their opportunity trying to make that particular startup work rather than some other, or simply going to work for an incumbent. This deal probably did more damage to the tech startup ecosystem than anything I've seen in my 25 years in Silicon Valley.
  - aiCodeMonkey 1y ago
    did the team that joined deepmind forfeit their equity or will the cognition acquisition basically allow them to get a double payout from their equity?
  - pinoy420 1y ago
    [dead]
dang 1y ago
Recent and related: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44536988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44536988 - July 2025 (679 comments)) Attended Windsurf's Build Night 18 hours before founders joined Google DeepMind - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44539884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44539884 - July 2025 (1 comment)
jsemrau 1y ago
Cognition also works with Goldman Sachs now.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
amanleenp 1y ago
Wait, is this final? Has Cursor or Augment Code or the next big Coding Assistant made their offer already?
sergiotapia 1y ago
I totally missed the puck with this one. There was a time where Cursor did not have the agent feel of a true AI pair-programming buddy. Windsurf had that magical aspect, and I totally thought they would destroy Cursor. But it took Cursor about 2 weeks by my recollection to add agent mode, and ultimately I went back to Cursor because of their better WSL2 integration. For those brief 2 weeks, Windsurf felt like the SOTA tool. Crazy how the winds change.
- joshgachnang 1y ago
  Same experience. I was using Windsurf for a couple of weeks, but felt like the editor wasn't as nice to use as Cursor, so features an agent could handle went to Windsurf and pair coding was more with Cursor. Once Cursor got agent mode, I haven't really touched Windsurf. Feels like a new SOTA tool every couple weeks. Heck, the post below this is about a new agentic IDE.
  - bluelightning2k 1y ago
    As someone who stuck with it - it's good. And it's not actually just a thin wrapper. Their tab model is really, really good now (I think that was Cursor's big advantage for a long time). And they also price very fairly (read: heavily subsidized, minus Claude).
_jab 1y ago
Let this be a learning lesson in judging these deals based on partial information. Kudos to the Google, Windsurf, and Cognition teams for keeping all of these deals under wraps until announcement (OpenAI could learn something...), but even so it's likely that we the public will never learn every detail of what transpired. I've seen a lot of harsh, misguided takes over the past few days, like that the Windsurf founders screwed over their employees, or that OpenAI reneged on the deal. In this case, this seems like a happy ending for all parties involved: congrats to the Windsurf team!
- akavi 1y ago
  If my understanding is correct, this is still a much worse deal for employees than if Windsurf's exec team had negotiated a "standard" "accelerated vesting, common conversion" acquisition with Google. Presumably the "payout" from Cognition is at a lower nominal value and in illiquid (and IMO overvalued) shares in Cognition rather than cash.
- objclxt 1y ago
  > I've seen a lot of harsh, misguided takes over the past few days, like that the Windsurf founders screwed over their employees [...] In this case, this seems like a happy ending for all parties involved There is no evidence at all in the announcement that is the case. It just says "100% of Windsurf employees will participate financially in this deal". What "participate financially" looks like is not elaborated upon. It is possible you're right. It's also equally possible that the founders have still screwed over their employees, we just don't know. Nothing in this post supports either position.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - no_wizard 1y ago
    >It is possible you're right. It's also equally possible that the founders have still screwed over their employees, we just don't know. Nothing in this post supports either position. In the lack of evidence, its okay to assume the most likely scenario, which is the executives & shareholders will make out like bandits and everyone else is likely to at best, get pennies.
conartist6 1y ago
I hit myself in the head as hard as I could without causing permanent damage
- gtsop 1y ago
  Care to explain? I am honestly clueless
  - conartist6 1y ago
    I don't even remember anymore. I guess hitting myself in the head worked..? But in general my reason for hitting myself in the head is that I'm an IDE author and people keep tripping over themselves to place great value on forks of VSCode
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
gsibble 1y ago
This is fantastic news. Especially the way they are structuring the equity payout.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
gigatexal 1y ago
Will the remaining employees not bought out and brought over to Microsoft get a windfall in this deal even if they’re stakes haven’t vested?
ls_stats 1y ago
Isn't Devin AI basically a scam, selling an "AI Software Engineer" when no such thing exists.
- joshgachnang 1y ago
  We're using it consistently to put out (albeit smaller) features.
  - mindwok 1y ago
    Any examples? Curious what you let it rip on and what it can actually do.
Buttons840 1y ago
Hello Cognition AI, My name is Devin; it has been for many decades now. I'm embarrassed to see you've named your product after me. It has already prompted uncomfortable jokes at my expense, and I'm sure there will be more. I now have newfound empathy for people named Alexa. For instance, people have made jokes about my name in interviews, and it's embarrassing for me, and thus awkward for everyone, and awkward interactions make it objectively less likely that I will get job offers. I don't think any product should be named after people. Please change the name of Devin.
- throwawaysleep 1y ago
  Plenty of men would love to have their name be a euphemism for eroticism.
- handfuloflight 1y ago
  Meanwhile, Claudes are getting ahead!
- bluelightning2k 1y ago
  Reading this made me wish I hadn't named my son Windsurf
- OccamsMirror 1y ago
  Apart from this news I haven't heard about Devin in a long time. Not since the very start of the AI hype. Considering how foolish a purchase this seems to be I don't think you're going to have to worry about them Bogarting your name for too much longer.
kubb 1y ago
Unpopular, controversial take: there should be an LSP extension that lets CLI agents, like Claude Code show diffs in the editor, and also one for completions, and sending snippets back to the CLI. That, by itself, would obliterate the entire value of Windsurf or Cursor or whatever. The fact that Google has this kind of money and spends it on dubious "talent" (though none of these people are known in the community) is a testament to how overfunded tech companies are compared to the value that they provide.
- abletonlive 1y ago
  "overfunded" is a weird way to talk about a tech company that is incredibly profitable.
  - margalabargala 1y ago
    Revenue is a funding source. Companies with too much money sometimes made really dumb decisions with that money. The fact that one division of Google is wildly profitable does not exempt other parts of the company from criticism of their financially dubious choices.
    - abletonlive 1y ago
      Net profit can't be used as a measure of both "funding" and "value generation" while saying that a company is "overfunded" because it doesn't provide enough "value". Come back to your senses.
      - margalabargala 1y ago
        I'm genuinely not sure if you're not understanding, or deliberately ignoring my point. I'll assume the former and try again. Maybe you didn't realize I'm not the person you originally replied to? If a company is profitable, they have funds. The funds generated by the profits, can be used to fund additional internal projects. If the bucket of funds from profits gets ridiculously large, then it may begin to be used for vanity projects, like gutting an AI company, or building a gold statue of the founder. It seems reasonable to call companies spending on mostly-useless excesses "overfunded".
cshores 1y ago
[flagged]
- m3kw9 1y ago
  To be fair OpenAI didn’t screw windsurf yet. Or did they
  - cshores 1y ago
    Windsurf screwed OpenAI from the sound of it.
- tomhow 1y ago
  Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
827a 1y ago
Does anyone actually use Windsurf? I know a ton of people on Cursor, Cline, Roo, Claude Code... but zero people in my engineering circles have even mentioned trying Windsurf.
- herval 1y ago
  For me it was substantially better than Cursor. Their RAG/code indexing/whatever implementation is better (Cursor seems to completely fall apart on larger codebases, unless you keep a very detailed cursorrules file). The cmd+tab was also substantially better. Plus it's cheaper than using Cline. But with all this changing of hands, I'm not sure I can trust it going forward at all, so I guess it's back to looking for alternatives.
- thenaturalist 1y ago
  It has been my go to IDE over all others. They had released their own model which was free and good enough a couple of weeks back. Obviously will need to look for alternatives.
- lqstuart 1y ago
  I tried it once and couldn’t understand why it exists. Neither windsurf nor cursor seem to offer anything Cline doesn’t, and the real Microsoft developed tools like Pylance are also broken and can’t be replaced with shitty AI.
- pplante 1y ago
  I was using Windsurf in Pycharm, until I switched to Claude Code / Gemini CLI last week. I am also finding that Copilot with Sonnet 4 is pretty on par to Windsurf.
  - williamzeng0 1y ago
    https://sweep.dev/ https://sweep.dev/ is better than Copilot/Windsurf in PyCharm (disclaimer I am one of the founders)
lqstuart 1y ago
Windsurf already had sold their code and most of their devs to DeepMind. The company is worthless, idk what Devin thinks they’re buying.
- thenaturalist 1y ago
  Clearly you are more informed wrt to remaining IP and talent than the CEO of Devin. Clearly.
kamhh94 1y ago
What a thoughtfully written letter. You have to respect great leaders when they communicate in this eloquent, respectful manner.
vonnik 1y ago
that the founders went one way and the engineers went another suggests a failure of leadership IMHO.
pm90 1y ago
I think the amount of turmoil around these deals is giving more weight to the possibility that we’re in a massive bubble thats quite divorced from any kind of fundamentals. Sooner or later the bubbles gonna burst.
- ch4s3 1y ago
  Yeah, I wonder if there are parallels to server-less tools of a few years ago.
- yomismoaqui 1y ago
  Remember that the web also had a bubble that popped and look at where are we now with Google, Amazon, Meta... I think that there is a bubble but it's shaped more like the web bubble and less like the crypto bubble.
  - theappsecguy 1y ago
    “Web” is such a broad category. Quite a leap from LLM wrappers.
    - joe_the_user 1y ago
      Well, LLMs are themselves very broad. They encompass everything from web search to everything that you could automate yourself but don't have the time. I don't LLM capacities have to reach human-equivalent for their uses to multiply for years to come. I don't LLM technology as it exists can reach AGI by the simple addition of more compute power and moreover, I don't think adding computer necessarily is going to provide proportionate benefit (indeed, someone pointed-out that the current talent race acknowledges that brute-force has likely had it's day and some other "magic" is needed. Unlike brute-force, technical advances can't be summoned at will).
      - Terr_ 1y ago
        > Well, LLMs are themselves very broad. I think overstating their broad-ness is core to the hype-cycle going on. Everyone wants to believe—or wants a buyer to believe—that a machine which can grow documents about X is just as good (and reliable) as actually creating X.
frankfrank13 1y ago
Two products that nobody uses, together at last
rwyinuse 1y ago
I don't see a justification for high valuations of companies that aim to build an "AI Software engineer". If something like Devin really succeeds, then anyone can use their product to simply build their own competing AI engineer. There's no moat, it's just another LLM wrapper SaaS.
- ar_lan 1y ago
  This is my exact takeaway too, and I'm always surprised it doesn't get mentioned often. If AI is truly groundbreaking, then shouldn't AI be able to re-implement itself? Which, to me, would imply that every AI company is not only full of software devs cannibalizing themselves, but the companies themselves also are.
  - SJC_Hacker 1y ago
    This is my watershed for true AGI. It should be able to create a smarter version of itself. Last I checked, feeding the output of an LLM back into its training data leads to a progressively worse LLM. (Note I'm not talking about distillation, which involves training a smaller model, by sacrificing accuracy. I'm referring to an equal or greater number of model parameters)
    - fragmede 1y ago
      If the LLM is given the code for its training and is able to improve that, does that count? Because it seems like a safe bet that we're already there, the only problem is latency of training runs.
- taejavu 1y ago
  There are any number of tools that already make that promise. Turns out it’s still hard to complete projects and bring them to market.
- adamoshadjivas 1y ago
  I don't see this. The ai software engineer that succeeds, maybe it's because of a mixture of very complicated architecture derived from novel research etc. You can't replicate that with just hiring more human engineers, it takes time and effort and elite hiring. Plus enterprise support etc. Devin etc will give you let's say 10x more engineering power, but not necessarily elite one.
Hansenq 1y ago
This is the logical, satisfying, and probably best conclusion to an un-ideal and optically terrible situation all parties were placed in. First, OpenAI wanted to acquire Windsurf. Terrific move! Win-win for OpenAI (who needs more AI product) and Windsurf (for the deal price). But this fell apart because Windsurf didn't want the IP to go to Microsoft (which imo should not have been not a big deal, especially if you knew what would have happened next). Big loss for all parties for this to have fallen apart. My biggest question still is why not continue on as an independent company? Perhaps losing access to Claude doomed signups; perhaps employees/investors had a taste of an exit and still wanted it; perhaps due to fiduciary duty to maximize returns; perhaps their growth stalled due to the announcement? In any case, the founders got a similarly equivalent deal from Google, and were arguably wise to pursue it. But Google's Corp Dev team here is the most maddening. Why not fully acquire the entire company, instead of doing the same "acquihire and license" deal that was done to Character AI, Adept, Scale, etc.? Risk of FTC antitrust review is a thing, but Google's not even competitive in the coding market, so I doubt there is a review (though I do hear that all acquisitions by large tech companies these days are reviewed by default). If there's anyone to blame in this situation, it's the FTC and Google for pursuing this strategy, instead of a full acquisition. Win-win for Google (for the team) and Windsurf (for getting a similar acquisition price, but liquid!). Imo, the founders did a good job ensuring that close to the $3B acquisition price was reflected in the $2.5B Google deal--all existing investors and vested employee/equity holders are paid out; the company also retained $100M which was suspiciously similar to the amount needed to pay out all unvested employee/equity holders [1]. So theoretically the remaining company could pay accelerate vesting, then pay out the cash to their remaining employees, and then shut down, to give everyone the same exit as an acquisition, or better. This might have been the best scenario, because the brand damage to Windsurf as an IDE that happened over the weekend was pretty close to unrecoverable for them as an independent company. But instead, the company leadership decided to field acquisition offers for the remaining company and IP, and got one from Cognition. (I'm actually surprised this acquisition isn't under FTC review; it's more plainly an agentic coding company acquiring a competitor agentic coding company). In taking the offer, it reinforces that the Windsurf IDE will continue to exist, that they have a R&D team backing the IDE again, and can marry Windsurf's enterprise sales chops with Cognition's product [3]. Win-win for both Cognition and Windsurf. So overall, win-win-win all around, except for OpenAI, Varun's public reputation (imo, undeserved), and startups hiring employees (who might think they might not get a proper exit) [2]. [1] https://x.com/haridigresses/status/1944406541064433848 https://x.com/haridigresses/status/1944406541064433848 [2] https://stratechery.com/2025/google-and-windsurf-stinky-deals-chestertons-fence-and-the-silicon-valley-ecosystem/ https://stratechery.com/2025/google-and-windsurf-stinky-deal... [3] https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/1944845868273709520 https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/1944845868273709520
oytis 1y ago
So the nobility goes to Google and rank and file engineers are subject to consolidation, am I reading this right?
- paxys 1y ago
  "Consolidation" aka "we got the IP we wanted, you are all now redundant"
cheriot 1y ago
Very curious how we'll look back on Google spending 2 billion dollars to "license IP" and hire a handful of people. If there's 47m software engineers in the world, at $200/month, and 50% gross profit that's a $56 billion TAM. Not crazy to think it's more if we include the adjacent space of analyst roles that write software (sql, advanced excel, etc). They'll have to crush it to make a $2 billion acquihire look reasonable, but it's possible.
- spongebobstoes 1y ago
  that's not the market they're thinking of, they're thinking of the total amount of money spent on developers per year, globally, and capturing a percentage of that
  - cheriot 1y ago
    Will require a lot of barriers to entry to charge %. Not disagreeing with your statement of their thinking, but will be v surprised if that pans out.
  - citizenpaul 1y ago
    They are doing what they've always done skirting the edges of antitrust laws by buying up competitors before they become competitors so that they can shut them down.
- ivape 1y ago
  It’s more about not getting embarrassed ever again. The breakthrough papers for LLMs came from Google, but not the product. This was embarrassing. Even if you have to spend double on everything from now on you do it, because Google effectively got sucker punched by ChatGPT.
  - whamlastxmas 1y ago
    It’s sad that the organizational failures that led to that embarrassment will definitely not change. Too much eagerness for subjugation
- 1y ago
prakashn27 1y ago
I writing this just after the night end llm cannot even replace to using Trans i18n react component if it is not in context of the file. We are still far from agi
wonderwonder 1y ago
I've never heard of Cognition (not a slight on them, its just me being disconnected). How much was the deal for and how do they have this type of money? Wasn't there just an article out yesterday or so saying that Windsurf's leadership was going to google?
CSMastermind 1y ago
The worst AI coding tool I've tried aquiring the best is interesting.
g42gregory 1y ago
I thought OpenAI already acquired Windsurf for $3BN? And Anthropic refused to give them discounted version of Claude 4 because of that?
xyst 1y ago
"Devin" is making itself fatter and prepping itself for another acquisition. Google or MS? Maybe Apple? The "world-class GTM" is a joke.
bluelightning2k 1y ago
It's weird being a Windsurf fan on HN. You get the feeling that you're in the minority or doing it wrong because the dialog is dominated by Cursor and (more recently) Claude Code. It's also been a lot of random stuff recently with their 3 separate Ross and Rachel acquisition storylines. Some takeaways: 1. Devin/Cognition definitely have a legit AI dev agent now 2. It's crazy what Google passed on. The fact that it was worth it to them without the traditional best assets is wild. Guess that's what happens when you play on ultra hard mode with an infinite money glitch. 3. I am worried/pre-emptively sad that Windsurf will likely go away or get nerfed, more expensive etc.
- TiredOfLife 1y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTCoding/comments/1m05ar4/it_sadly_seems_like_windsurfcognition_might/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTCoding/comments/1m05ar4/it_s...
- alittletooraph2 1y ago
  "If the founder/CEO and best engineers at Windsurf don't believe in that product/company, why should you?" ^ Any company that competes with them could say that and it would create some pause.
DannyBee 1y ago
Windsurf is the soham parekh of acquisitions at this point. Is there anyone not acquiring windsurf?
jgalt212 1y ago
All these agentic tools are great for Nvidia. They just hoover up tokens like no tomorrow.
greenhat76 1y ago
I have been testing Devin for a long time, early access and all. I'm not impressed by it at all, a decent developer with their LLM of choice does a far better job.
- deepdarkforest 1y ago
  I mean isn't that amazing for an 1 year old product? If it's already better than a terrible dev with an LLM, or better than a decent dev without an LLM, it's not hard to imagine in 2-3-5 years Devin is better and cheaper than most hires you could do. Without having to do HR, equity etc.
komali2 1y ago
I just started trying out Codeium in Nvim on a recommendation from a video that's like, less than 6 months old. Oops, actually, codeium is Windsurf now. But the tool is still codeium.nvim at least. I guess it's about to happen again!
i_love_retros 1y ago
What a waste of money!
pointmatic 1y ago
Great news...saw Windsurf vibing on YC podcast several months ago...and it's my go-to now. Google Gemini Pro 2.5 works best for me (Python, C++, Fortran).
- pointmatic 1y ago
  Just finished a weather analytics code translation test from Fortran to C++ and Python. It was simple temperature high/low averaging, so to amp up the processing, I worked with Gemini to add a Monte Carlo simulation for a 7-day weather forecast, and a 2D heat diffusion/advection physics model to calculate the temperatures across a NxN grid over T time divisions.

502 points by alazsengul 1y ago

xnx 1y ago

Sounds like one of those "Two turkeys don't make an eagle." situations.

Important context from the tweet: > This transaction is structured so that 100% of Windsurf employees will participate financially. They will also have all vesting cliffs waived and will receive fully accelerated vesting for their work to date.

asadotzler 1y ago
Not important, marketing speak unless it comes with numbers. "We'll split 100% of $10 across every employee" is just as much a possibility as the windfall their PR team has convinced you of.
oytis 1y ago
So they will get stocks of a company that ceases to exist basically

akavi 1y ago

Is this purely the rump company left over from the Google pseudo-acquistion? Or does this mean that deal fell through? Does this represent confirmation that there was no pro-rata compensation to common share holders in the Google deal? I just have so many questions.

xnx 1y ago
And what is Google "paying $2.4 billion in license fees" to use Windsurf's technology for, and to who? Does Windsurf have any technology?
- mattlondon 1y ago
  I suspect it is more a "licence" for the things in the staff's heads for those who were poached.
  - whamlastxmas 1y ago
    And this highlights why intellectual property is really gross to me
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- mritchie712 1y ago
  not sure of windsurf's ToS, but Google could be after the usage data (e.g. did the user accept the suggested edit? if not, what did they change it to? etc.)
lunarboy 1y ago
Windsurf founding team is already at Google

neural_thing 1y ago

Galaxy brain move by cognition

annodomini2019 1y ago

What does this actually mean for the product? Huge fan of the plugin on Jetbrains products...

k3nz0 1y ago
Which plugin?
- annodomini2019 1y ago
  The Windsurf plugin!
williamzeng0 1y ago
Transparently I'm a founder building a plugin that's like "Cursor for JetBrains IDEs", if you're an windsurf user you might like us: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/26860-sweep-ai https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/26860-sweep-ai
- annodomini2019 1y ago
  How would you describe your stance towards security? I'm an enterprise user so it'd have to clear a high bar with our security team
  - williamzeng0 1y ago
    I think the two big things are privacy mode on by default and zero data retention by default. No code or prompts are stored unless you opt-in. We also have on-prem deployment options but it's much more expensive.

tibbydudeza 1y ago

What's left ???.

kevindamm 1y ago
The company was intact after key employees moved to Alphabet, and importantly there was a service contract to use Windsurf, so apparently Google will be paying Cognition, ultimately, now.
- xnx 1y ago
  > there was a service contract to use Windsurf I wonder what the terms were there. Hard for me to imagine why Google would've included that in the deal.
  - kevindamm 1y ago
    I'm just speculating but you'd get to use the IP without needing to negotiate overmuch about it, if they're using GCP or can be retrofitted to then you could set prices at a discount but claim a market rate when discussing growth of usage, which is great at quarterly earnings report time.. or even just as an ease-of-transition to expand into Windsurf's existing user base? There are plenty of reasons, including negotiation leverage, optics, or even just appeasment to the founders or board that the original project doesn't get immediately destroyed.
chews 1y ago
the hosed employees that actually built a great product while their leadership sings "go on take the money and run" on their mega yacht.
- barbazoo 1y ago
  Presumably the employees were compensated fairly for their work while they worked there?
  - 1y ago

jeanlucas 1y ago

This is so confusing

makin 1y ago

I was a bit confused as to what "Cognition" was, but they're the makers of Devin (edit: that just got added to the title, for reference), so that makes sense. Just buying the competition, the only surprise is they had more money to spend than the big ones.

handfuloflight 1y ago
As far as I recall they were first to market with the "AI software engineer" promise.
brentm 1y ago
Well Google did also just pay $2.5B to license Windsurf in perpetuity. Cognition is probably spending a lot less than that for just whatever it left after that type of a deal. Remaining team members, etc.
- mkagenius 1y ago
  > The acquisition includes Windsurf’s IP, product, trademark and brand, and strong business. So, Google will be paying $2.5B to Devin guys?
  - tedivm 1y ago
    No, as some portion of the $2.5b goes to Windsurf investors. Basically, Google bought the top talent from the company. This cash was used (according to articles I read this morning) in part to pay directly out to shareholders, and in exchange Google got the top talent from the company and a license for the software (probably mostly so their new talent didn't have to worry about NDA, non-compete, and patent challenges). Since this money went to shareholders, not to the company bank, and since top talent fleeing the company reduces the value of the company the overall value of Windsurf likely went down as part of the Google deal. This in turn likely made it cheap enough for the remainder to be purchased by Cognition.
- xnx 1y ago
  > Google did also just pay $2.5B to license Windsurf in perpetuity Could there have been a clause that made this invalid in case of acquisition?

htrp 1y ago

so devin gets the leftover remains of windsurf to fix their agentic AI ide that wasn't working in the first place?

rvz 1y ago
yes.
badgersnake 1y ago
So some VCs got rinsed for Google’s leftovers.
- bananapub 1y ago
  ok so it's not all bad then
- fortysixpercent 1y ago
  VC's probably did fine. Their preferred shares get paid out on the dividend out of the Google 'license' fee. They might get some stock in Cognition as part of the acquisition of the remains of the company, but they've likely already been made whole and made a tidy profit on money invested in early rounds.

krat0sprakhar 1y ago

Wait, so Google picks up the talent, and Devin picks up the brand/product? This is so confusing!

TIPSIO 1y ago
I think it's safe to say don't use Windsurf. There are so many other options.
- bicx 1y ago
  Unfortunately this seems to be true. I like Windsurf, but these days I just use it as a harness for running Claude Code while still retaining decent code completions.
  - OldfieldFund 1y ago
    Try Gemini CLI too. Free and I like it more than Claude Code.
    - artificialLimbs 1y ago
      How do you do the nice line-by-line (or section-by-section) before/after handling in a CLI tool?
      - hobs 1y ago
        It has an external editor option (which I havent tried) the cli interface by default is pretty bad for medium to large code changes.
      - stickfigure 1y ago
        Start with a clean git (even if you're just committing WIP locally). Run the tool. See the diffs in your IDE. They show up immediately in IntelliJ; use the "commit" pane. Same as if I had edited a bunch of files. Works fine.
    - 1y ago

rvz 1y ago

Must have been acquired for an extreme discount far from the $3B offer from OpenAI and Windsurf's (alleged) valuation of $1.3BN. Cognition being worth $4B with Devin being raced to zero by Claude Code also undercutting both Windsurf and Cursor have a very steep hill to climb. Having both Devin and Windsurf will just make them raise more money as they burn through their operational costs.

seatac76 1y ago
Google already paid $2.4B out of the $3B OpenAI deal, to what I imagine is Cognition now. Cognition must have spent low 100s of Millions max.
- xnx 1y ago
  > Google already paid $2.4B This is unclear. $2.4B was for licensing and compensation. Why would Google have agreed to pay any significant amount to the Windsurf leftovers?

klohto 1y ago

Having been acquired by Google, there is always a leeway for the execs to take the employees with them. Google is a weak negotiator when they NEED something. On the other hand, I can imagine the execs taking Google golden handcuffs while trying to close the Cognition deal so the employees are made whole or maybe even on better terms than if they all went to Google.

isodev 1y ago

I’m really confused now. Also, is there really that much of a transformative difference between Windsurf and say OpenAI/Claude etc to warrant this crazy valuations?

xnx 1y ago
> crazy valuations I haven't seen anything to indicate what was paid for what's left of Windsurf.
- isodev 1y ago
  I was also referring to the $2.5B Google paid. I can’t imagine what could possibly be the value they’re hoping to get
  - xnx 1y ago
    I'd love to learn more about that arrangement. Maybe Google's terms indicated that the "licensing fees" portion of "$2.4 billion in licensing fees and for compensation" are void if Windsurf gets acquired.
  - brulard 1y ago
    They got the top talent from there with the technology and they can continue on that or be used for other AI projects, right?
guluarte 1y ago
I'm also confused why Devin is worth billions
- yoyohello13 1y ago
  For real. According to the marketing material. Couldn’t Devon just whip up a windsurf competitor in minutes?
  - iamleppert 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

alwinaugustin 1y ago

I use cursor

seatac76 1y ago

I hope Windsurf employees made some money in this whole kerfuffle. Would be terrible if they got left out of the payday.

xnx 1y ago
The ones that went to Google did! I don't know if the remaining employees are getting anything out of this acquisition.
bradly 1y ago
Very clearly called out in the article: > To that end, Jeff and I worked together to ensure that every single employee is treated with respect and well taken care of in this transaction. Specifically: > 100% of Windsurf employees will participate financially in this deal > 100% of Windsurf employees will have vesting cliffs waived for their work to date > 100% of Windsurf employees will receive fully accelerated vesting for their work to date
- asadotzler 1y ago
  Not clearly called out. That call out is as clear as mud. We have no idea how much if any money the left behind employees will get and it's almost certainly far less than they would have got if their execs had held out for a deal that benefited everyone instead of their selfish and damaging to the entire startup ecosystem deal with Google.

jspann 1y ago

> 100% of Windsurf employees will participate financially in this deal > 100% of Windsurf employees will have vesting cliffs waived for their work to date > 100% of Windsurf employees will receive fully accelerated vesting for their work to date This sounds like a happy ending for the employees of Windsurf and a good deal for Cognition

xnx 1y ago
I'm not so sure. No telling what the purchase price was.
- handfuloflight 1y ago
  Or how much of it is in Cognition stock.
krasin 1y ago
> This sounds like a happy ending for the employees of Windsurf and a good deal for Cognition The employees were robbed from having a big cash exit. Illiquid stock options from Windsurf were converted to illiquid stock options of Devin. What's worse is that the well is now poisoned. I would advise against joining startups from now on, because I think that there's no upside for employees anymore.
frankfrank13 1y ago
I don't think so. If your shares dropped 90% overnight you wouldn't be excited to have your vesting cliff waived
whamlastxmas 1y ago
Are the cliffs waived or accelerated? Makes me not trust this
carimura 1y ago
"work to" is key.. sounds like they aren't fully accelerating, just accelerating the time they worked that hasn't vested. So if you were hired a week ago, you get a week's worth of participation.

bravetraveler 1y ago

"Devin's on first" just doesn't work the same

vouaobrasil 1y ago

I wonder if we'll ever stop to ask ourselves if faster and faster output of software is actually a good thing for the world. Or will we just continue because it's just what we do nowadays in civilization to get ahead?

hollowturtle 1y ago
ahead of what? ahead of generating ugly and mostly usable masks over the same data. I'm in favor of AI but it seems to me that no one really stopped asking himself what real problems people have and how to actually fix them
Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
I think so but not for the reason that you think. See, most closed source software really just pisses me off of ideological reasons, I just like to tinker with things and just having the possibility to do so by being provided the source code really helps my mind feel happy I guess. So I "vibe coded" a game that I used to play and some projects that I was curious about and I just wanted to tinker too. sure the game and code have bugs. Also with the help of AI, I feel like I can tinker about things that I don't know too much about and get a decent distance ahead. You might think that I am an AI advocate by reading this comment, but quite the contrary, I personally think that this is the only positive quality that AI helped in quite substantially. But at what cost? The job market has sunk a large hole and nobody's hiring the junior devs because everybody feels better doing some AI deals than hiring junior devs. My hunch is that senior devs are extremely in demand and are paid decently and so will retire on average early too. Then, there would be a huge gap b/w senior and juniors, because nobody's hiring the junior engineers now, so who will become the senior engineers if nobody got hired in the first place. I really hope that most companies actually realize that the AI game is quite a funny game really, most companies are too invested into it to realize that really, open source AI will catch up and there is just no moat with AI and building with AI or just doing stuff with AI isn't that meaningfully significant as they think it is as shown by recent studies.
- gtsop 1y ago
  > that senior devs are extremely in demand Is this true? I am not seeing salaries rising, the demand seems to be met. But maybe I'm wrong.

agigao 1y ago

Devin/Cognition? All right, cancelled.

markbao 1y ago

Edit: nvm, see replies

TZubiri 1y ago
I think google is buying windsurf, they are leaving 100% of assets and some employees, and windsurf is buying that 100m in assets + taking the leftover employee liability. Microsoft poached the talent, devin Co. Picks up the scraps
hadlock 1y ago
"Acquiring" is often synonymous with "merger". Technically the surviving company acquires the other, but effectively it's a merger. Not always, but it's not uncommon to see two weaker companies merge in a competitive landscape to survive. It also counts as a liquidity event allowing employees some financial levers.
- muzz 1y ago
  But these seem to be two well-funded companies? I.e. both with $100M+ funding within the last 12 months
xnx 1y ago
> How does this transaction make sense? The fact that it doesn't make sense with those numbers almost surely indicates those numbers are misleading. > Google paid a $2.4 billion licensing fee This is the reported number for licensing and compensation, but who knows what the terms really were. > Cognition’s valuation is $4 billion Doubtful
john_moscow 1y ago
They probably got what got left of it in a cashless deal. Basically, the shareholders got to exchange X shares in a fatally wounded company into Y shares in a still-alive startup. The economic sense depends on the ratio between X and Y, but if the board was close to panicking due to recent events, Cognition probably got a good deal.

aiCodeMonkey 1y ago

Uhh so where does the 2.4B go to? For the "licensing" rights but without equity to Windsurf? Does the whole 2.4B get distributed amongst the talent that Google acquired or is it shared amongst all Windsurf employees?

asadotzler 1y ago
Windsurf employees left behind by their executives get none of that Google money. It went to the selfish exec team and a few top employees that abandoned their teams and projects for Google's cash, and what didn't go to those selfish jerks went to Windsurf's investors. The rank and file that were abandoned by their leadership got totally screwed. Startup executives will never again be trusted to deal fairly with the people who spend their opportunity trying to make that particular startup work rather than some other, or simply going to work for an incumbent. This deal probably did more damage to the tech startup ecosystem than anything I've seen in my 25 years in Silicon Valley.
- aiCodeMonkey 1y ago
  did the team that joined deepmind forfeit their equity or will the cognition acquisition basically allow them to get a double payout from their equity?
- pinoy420 1y ago
  [dead]

dang 1y ago

Recent and related: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44536988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44536988 - July 2025 (679 comments)) Attended Windsurf's Build Night 18 hours before founders joined Google DeepMind - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44539884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44539884 - July 2025 (1 comment)

jsemrau 1y ago

Cognition also works with Goldman Sachs now.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

amanleenp 1y ago

Wait, is this final? Has Cursor or Augment Code or the next big Coding Assistant made their offer already?

sergiotapia 1y ago

I totally missed the puck with this one. There was a time where Cursor did not have the agent feel of a true AI pair-programming buddy. Windsurf had that magical aspect, and I totally thought they would destroy Cursor. But it took Cursor about 2 weeks by my recollection to add agent mode, and ultimately I went back to Cursor because of their better WSL2 integration. For those brief 2 weeks, Windsurf felt like the SOTA tool. Crazy how the winds change.

joshgachnang 1y ago
Same experience. I was using Windsurf for a couple of weeks, but felt like the editor wasn't as nice to use as Cursor, so features an agent could handle went to Windsurf and pair coding was more with Cursor. Once Cursor got agent mode, I haven't really touched Windsurf. Feels like a new SOTA tool every couple weeks. Heck, the post below this is about a new agentic IDE.
- bluelightning2k 1y ago
  As someone who stuck with it - it's good. And it's not actually just a thin wrapper. Their tab model is really, really good now (I think that was Cursor's big advantage for a long time). And they also price very fairly (read: heavily subsidized, minus Claude).

_jab 1y ago

Let this be a learning lesson in judging these deals based on partial information. Kudos to the Google, Windsurf, and Cognition teams for keeping all of these deals under wraps until announcement (OpenAI could learn something...), but even so it's likely that we the public will never learn every detail of what transpired. I've seen a lot of harsh, misguided takes over the past few days, like that the Windsurf founders screwed over their employees, or that OpenAI reneged on the deal. In this case, this seems like a happy ending for all parties involved: congrats to the Windsurf team!

akavi 1y ago
If my understanding is correct, this is still a much worse deal for employees than if Windsurf's exec team had negotiated a "standard" "accelerated vesting, common conversion" acquisition with Google. Presumably the "payout" from Cognition is at a lower nominal value and in illiquid (and IMO overvalued) shares in Cognition rather than cash.
objclxt 1y ago
> I've seen a lot of harsh, misguided takes over the past few days, like that the Windsurf founders screwed over their employees [...] In this case, this seems like a happy ending for all parties involved There is no evidence at all in the announcement that is the case. It just says "100% of Windsurf employees will participate financially in this deal". What "participate financially" looks like is not elaborated upon. It is possible you're right. It's also equally possible that the founders have still screwed over their employees, we just don't know. Nothing in this post supports either position.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- no_wizard 1y ago
  >It is possible you're right. It's also equally possible that the founders have still screwed over their employees, we just don't know. Nothing in this post supports either position. In the lack of evidence, its okay to assume the most likely scenario, which is the executives & shareholders will make out like bandits and everyone else is likely to at best, get pennies.

conartist6 1y ago

I hit myself in the head as hard as I could without causing permanent damage

gtsop 1y ago
Care to explain? I am honestly clueless
- conartist6 1y ago
  I don't even remember anymore. I guess hitting myself in the head worked..? But in general my reason for hitting myself in the head is that I'm an IDE author and people keep tripping over themselves to place great value on forks of VSCode
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

gsibble 1y ago

This is fantastic news. Especially the way they are structuring the equity payout.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

gigatexal 1y ago

Will the remaining employees not bought out and brought over to Microsoft get a windfall in this deal even if they’re stakes haven’t vested?

ls_stats 1y ago

Isn't Devin AI basically a scam, selling an "AI Software Engineer" when no such thing exists.

joshgachnang 1y ago
We're using it consistently to put out (albeit smaller) features.
- mindwok 1y ago
  Any examples? Curious what you let it rip on and what it can actually do.

Buttons840 1y ago

Hello Cognition AI, My name is Devin; it has been for many decades now. I'm embarrassed to see you've named your product after me. It has already prompted uncomfortable jokes at my expense, and I'm sure there will be more. I now have newfound empathy for people named Alexa. For instance, people have made jokes about my name in interviews, and it's embarrassing for me, and thus awkward for everyone, and awkward interactions make it objectively less likely that I will get job offers. I don't think any product should be named after people. Please change the name of Devin.

throwawaysleep 1y ago
Plenty of men would love to have their name be a euphemism for eroticism.
handfuloflight 1y ago
Meanwhile, Claudes are getting ahead!
bluelightning2k 1y ago
Reading this made me wish I hadn't named my son Windsurf
OccamsMirror 1y ago
Apart from this news I haven't heard about Devin in a long time. Not since the very start of the AI hype. Considering how foolish a purchase this seems to be I don't think you're going to have to worry about them Bogarting your name for too much longer.

kubb 1y ago

Unpopular, controversial take: there should be an LSP extension that lets CLI agents, like Claude Code show diffs in the editor, and also one for completions, and sending snippets back to the CLI. That, by itself, would obliterate the entire value of Windsurf or Cursor or whatever. The fact that Google has this kind of money and spends it on dubious "talent" (though none of these people are known in the community) is a testament to how overfunded tech companies are compared to the value that they provide.

abletonlive 1y ago
"overfunded" is a weird way to talk about a tech company that is incredibly profitable.
- margalabargala 1y ago
  Revenue is a funding source. Companies with too much money sometimes made really dumb decisions with that money. The fact that one division of Google is wildly profitable does not exempt other parts of the company from criticism of their financially dubious choices.
  - abletonlive 1y ago
    Net profit can't be used as a measure of both "funding" and "value generation" while saying that a company is "overfunded" because it doesn't provide enough "value". Come back to your senses.
    - margalabargala 1y ago
      I'm genuinely not sure if you're not understanding, or deliberately ignoring my point. I'll assume the former and try again. Maybe you didn't realize I'm not the person you originally replied to? If a company is profitable, they have funds. The funds generated by the profits, can be used to fund additional internal projects. If the bucket of funds from profits gets ridiculously large, then it may begin to be used for vanity projects, like gutting an AI company, or building a gold statue of the founder. It seems reasonable to call companies spending on mostly-useless excesses "overfunded".

cshores 1y ago

[flagged]

m3kw9 1y ago
To be fair OpenAI didn’t screw windsurf yet. Or did they
- cshores 1y ago
  Windsurf screwed OpenAI from the sound of it.
tomhow 1y ago
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

827a 1y ago

Does anyone actually use Windsurf? I know a ton of people on Cursor, Cline, Roo, Claude Code... but zero people in my engineering circles have even mentioned trying Windsurf.

herval 1y ago
For me it was substantially better than Cursor. Their RAG/code indexing/whatever implementation is better (Cursor seems to completely fall apart on larger codebases, unless you keep a very detailed cursorrules file). The cmd+tab was also substantially better. Plus it's cheaper than using Cline. But with all this changing of hands, I'm not sure I can trust it going forward at all, so I guess it's back to looking for alternatives.
thenaturalist 1y ago
It has been my go to IDE over all others. They had released their own model which was free and good enough a couple of weeks back. Obviously will need to look for alternatives.
lqstuart 1y ago
I tried it once and couldn’t understand why it exists. Neither windsurf nor cursor seem to offer anything Cline doesn’t, and the real Microsoft developed tools like Pylance are also broken and can’t be replaced with shitty AI.
pplante 1y ago
I was using Windsurf in Pycharm, until I switched to Claude Code / Gemini CLI last week. I am also finding that Copilot with Sonnet 4 is pretty on par to Windsurf.
- williamzeng0 1y ago
  https://sweep.dev/ https://sweep.dev/ is better than Copilot/Windsurf in PyCharm (disclaimer I am one of the founders)

lqstuart 1y ago

Windsurf already had sold their code and most of their devs to DeepMind. The company is worthless, idk what Devin thinks they’re buying.

thenaturalist 1y ago
Clearly you are more informed wrt to remaining IP and talent than the CEO of Devin. Clearly.

kamhh94 1y ago

What a thoughtfully written letter. You have to respect great leaders when they communicate in this eloquent, respectful manner.

vonnik 1y ago

that the founders went one way and the engineers went another suggests a failure of leadership IMHO.

pm90 1y ago

I think the amount of turmoil around these deals is giving more weight to the possibility that we’re in a massive bubble thats quite divorced from any kind of fundamentals. Sooner or later the bubbles gonna burst.

ch4s3 1y ago
Yeah, I wonder if there are parallels to server-less tools of a few years ago.
yomismoaqui 1y ago
Remember that the web also had a bubble that popped and look at where are we now with Google, Amazon, Meta... I think that there is a bubble but it's shaped more like the web bubble and less like the crypto bubble.
- theappsecguy 1y ago
  “Web” is such a broad category. Quite a leap from LLM wrappers.
  - joe_the_user 1y ago
    Well, LLMs are themselves very broad. They encompass everything from web search to everything that you could automate yourself but don't have the time. I don't LLM capacities have to reach human-equivalent for their uses to multiply for years to come. I don't LLM technology as it exists can reach AGI by the simple addition of more compute power and moreover, I don't think adding computer necessarily is going to provide proportionate benefit (indeed, someone pointed-out that the current talent race acknowledges that brute-force has likely had it's day and some other "magic" is needed. Unlike brute-force, technical advances can't be summoned at will).
    - Terr_ 1y ago
      > Well, LLMs are themselves very broad. I think overstating their broad-ness is core to the hype-cycle going on. Everyone wants to believe—or wants a buyer to believe—that a machine which can grow documents about X is just as good (and reliable) as actually creating X.

frankfrank13 1y ago

Two products that nobody uses, together at last

rwyinuse 1y ago

I don't see a justification for high valuations of companies that aim to build an "AI Software engineer". If something like Devin really succeeds, then anyone can use their product to simply build their own competing AI engineer. There's no moat, it's just another LLM wrapper SaaS.

ar_lan 1y ago
This is my exact takeaway too, and I'm always surprised it doesn't get mentioned often. If AI is truly groundbreaking, then shouldn't AI be able to re-implement itself? Which, to me, would imply that every AI company is not only full of software devs cannibalizing themselves, but the companies themselves also are.
- SJC_Hacker 1y ago
  This is my watershed for true AGI. It should be able to create a smarter version of itself. Last I checked, feeding the output of an LLM back into its training data leads to a progressively worse LLM. (Note I'm not talking about distillation, which involves training a smaller model, by sacrificing accuracy. I'm referring to an equal or greater number of model parameters)
  - fragmede 1y ago
    If the LLM is given the code for its training and is able to improve that, does that count? Because it seems like a safe bet that we're already there, the only problem is latency of training runs.
taejavu 1y ago
There are any number of tools that already make that promise. Turns out it’s still hard to complete projects and bring them to market.
adamoshadjivas 1y ago
I don't see this. The ai software engineer that succeeds, maybe it's because of a mixture of very complicated architecture derived from novel research etc. You can't replicate that with just hiring more human engineers, it takes time and effort and elite hiring. Plus enterprise support etc. Devin etc will give you let's say 10x more engineering power, but not necessarily elite one.

Hansenq 1y ago

This is the logical, satisfying, and probably best conclusion to an un-ideal and optically terrible situation all parties were placed in. First, OpenAI wanted to acquire Windsurf. Terrific move! Win-win for OpenAI (who needs more AI product) and Windsurf (for the deal price). But this fell apart because Windsurf didn't want the IP to go to Microsoft (which imo should not have been not a big deal, especially if you knew what would have happened next). Big loss for all parties for this to have fallen apart. My biggest question still is why not continue on as an independent company? Perhaps losing access to Claude doomed signups; perhaps employees/investors had a taste of an exit and still wanted it; perhaps due to fiduciary duty to maximize returns; perhaps their growth stalled due to the announcement? In any case, the founders got a similarly equivalent deal from Google, and were arguably wise to pursue it. But Google's Corp Dev team here is the most maddening. Why not fully acquire the entire company, instead of doing the same "acquihire and license" deal that was done to Character AI, Adept, Scale, etc.? Risk of FTC antitrust review is a thing, but Google's not even competitive in the coding market, so I doubt there is a review (though I do hear that all acquisitions by large tech companies these days are reviewed by default). If there's anyone to blame in this situation, it's the FTC and Google for pursuing this strategy, instead of a full acquisition. Win-win for Google (for the team) and Windsurf (for getting a similar acquisition price, but liquid!). Imo, the founders did a good job ensuring that close to the $3B acquisition price was reflected in the $2.5B Google deal--all existing investors and vested employee/equity holders are paid out; the company also retained $100M which was suspiciously similar to the amount needed to pay out all unvested employee/equity holders [1]. So theoretically the remaining company could pay accelerate vesting, then pay out the cash to their remaining employees, and then shut down, to give everyone the same exit as an acquisition, or better. This might have been the best scenario, because the brand damage to Windsurf as an IDE that happened over the weekend was pretty close to unrecoverable for them as an independent company. But instead, the company leadership decided to field acquisition offers for the remaining company and IP, and got one from Cognition. (I'm actually surprised this acquisition isn't under FTC review; it's more plainly an agentic coding company acquiring a competitor agentic coding company). In taking the offer, it reinforces that the Windsurf IDE will continue to exist, that they have a R&D team backing the IDE again, and can marry Windsurf's enterprise sales chops with Cognition's product [3]. Win-win for both Cognition and Windsurf. So overall, win-win-win all around, except for OpenAI, Varun's public reputation (imo, undeserved), and startups hiring employees (who might think they might not get a proper exit) [2]. [1] https://x.com/haridigresses/status/1944406541064433848 https://x.com/haridigresses/status/1944406541064433848 [2] https://stratechery.com/2025/google-and-windsurf-stinky-deals-chestertons-fence-and-the-silicon-valley-ecosystem/ https://stratechery.com/2025/google-and-windsurf-stinky-deal... [3] https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/1944845868273709520 https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/1944845868273709520

oytis 1y ago

So the nobility goes to Google and rank and file engineers are subject to consolidation, am I reading this right?

paxys 1y ago
"Consolidation" aka "we got the IP we wanted, you are all now redundant"

cheriot 1y ago

Very curious how we'll look back on Google spending 2 billion dollars to "license IP" and hire a handful of people. If there's 47m software engineers in the world, at $200/month, and 50% gross profit that's a $56 billion TAM. Not crazy to think it's more if we include the adjacent space of analyst roles that write software (sql, advanced excel, etc). They'll have to crush it to make a $2 billion acquihire look reasonable, but it's possible.

spongebobstoes 1y ago
that's not the market they're thinking of, they're thinking of the total amount of money spent on developers per year, globally, and capturing a percentage of that
- cheriot 1y ago
  Will require a lot of barriers to entry to charge %. Not disagreeing with your statement of their thinking, but will be v surprised if that pans out.
- citizenpaul 1y ago
  They are doing what they've always done skirting the edges of antitrust laws by buying up competitors before they become competitors so that they can shut them down.
ivape 1y ago
It’s more about not getting embarrassed ever again. The breakthrough papers for LLMs came from Google, but not the product. This was embarrassing. Even if you have to spend double on everything from now on you do it, because Google effectively got sucker punched by ChatGPT.
- whamlastxmas 1y ago
  It’s sad that the organizational failures that led to that embarrassment will definitely not change. Too much eagerness for subjugation
1y ago

prakashn27 1y ago

I writing this just after the night end llm cannot even replace to using Trans i18n react component if it is not in context of the file. We are still far from agi

wonderwonder 1y ago

I've never heard of Cognition (not a slight on them, its just me being disconnected). How much was the deal for and how do they have this type of money? Wasn't there just an article out yesterday or so saying that Windsurf's leadership was going to google?

CSMastermind 1y ago

The worst AI coding tool I've tried aquiring the best is interesting.

g42gregory 1y ago

I thought OpenAI already acquired Windsurf for $3BN? And Anthropic refused to give them discounted version of Claude 4 because of that?

xyst 1y ago

"Devin" is making itself fatter and prepping itself for another acquisition. Google or MS? Maybe Apple? The "world-class GTM" is a joke.

bluelightning2k 1y ago

It's weird being a Windsurf fan on HN. You get the feeling that you're in the minority or doing it wrong because the dialog is dominated by Cursor and (more recently) Claude Code. It's also been a lot of random stuff recently with their 3 separate Ross and Rachel acquisition storylines. Some takeaways: 1. Devin/Cognition definitely have a legit AI dev agent now 2. It's crazy what Google passed on. The fact that it was worth it to them without the traditional best assets is wild. Guess that's what happens when you play on ultra hard mode with an infinite money glitch. 3. I am worried/pre-emptively sad that Windsurf will likely go away or get nerfed, more expensive etc.

TiredOfLife 1y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTCoding/comments/1m05ar4/it_sadly_seems_like_windsurfcognition_might/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTCoding/comments/1m05ar4/it_s...
alittletooraph2 1y ago
"If the founder/CEO and best engineers at Windsurf don't believe in that product/company, why should you?" ^ Any company that competes with them could say that and it would create some pause.

DannyBee 1y ago

Windsurf is the soham parekh of acquisitions at this point. Is there anyone not acquiring windsurf?

jgalt212 1y ago

All these agentic tools are great for Nvidia. They just hoover up tokens like no tomorrow.

greenhat76 1y ago

I have been testing Devin for a long time, early access and all. I'm not impressed by it at all, a decent developer with their LLM of choice does a far better job.

deepdarkforest 1y ago
I mean isn't that amazing for an 1 year old product? If it's already better than a terrible dev with an LLM, or better than a decent dev without an LLM, it's not hard to imagine in 2-3-5 years Devin is better and cheaper than most hires you could do. Without having to do HR, equity etc.

komali2 1y ago

I just started trying out Codeium in Nvim on a recommendation from a video that's like, less than 6 months old. Oops, actually, codeium is Windsurf now. But the tool is still codeium.nvim at least. I guess it's about to happen again!

i_love_retros 1y ago

What a waste of money!

pointmatic 1y ago

Great news...saw Windsurf vibing on YC podcast several months ago...and it's my go-to now. Google Gemini Pro 2.5 works best for me (Python, C++, Fortran).

pointmatic 1y ago
Just finished a weather analytics code translation test from Fortran to C++ and Python. It was simple temperature high/low averaging, so to amp up the processing, I worked with Gemini to add a Monte Carlo simulation for a 7-day weather forecast, and a 2D heat diffusion/advection physics model to calculate the temperatures across a NxN grid over T time divisions.