Windsurf CEO opens up about ‘very bleak’ mood before Cognition deal

Days after AI coding startup has announced Windsurf that it is taken over by Cognition, Windsurf -Exec Jeff Wang took to x To offer more details about the drama and the uncertainty around the deal.

Windsurf was reportedly in acquisition interviews with OpenAI, but that deal fell apart, with Google DeepMind instead the CEO of the startup Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and hires some of the best researchers. Google is said to licensed the technology of Windsurf as part of the $ 2.4 billion deal – but does not take stocks in the company.

This was similar to the newest in the trend of ‘Reverse Acquihires’, in which large technology companies try to avoid antitrust research by hiring important startup team members and to permit their technology instead of startups.

But what happens to the startups and the employees who are left behind? As we discussed about the latest episode of Equity, a startup founder compared the departing windsurf managers with a captain who left his crew on a sinking ship.

Wang, who had been the head of Windsurf, became the company -CEO of the company after the departure of Mohan. In his position on X, he offered some sympathy for Mohan and Chen, whom he described as ‘great founders’ in a situation that ‘must have been difficult for them’.

Nevertheless, Wang told an all-hand meeting on Friday 11 June, where most team members expected to hear about the OpenAi-acquisition. Instead, he had to share the news about the Google deal and the resulting departure.

“The mood was very gloomy,” Wang said. “Some people were upset about financial results or colleagues left, while others were worried about the future. A few were in tears and the Q&A had been understandably hostile.”

According to Wang, although the company “had lost some great people and had taken a serious blow to moral ‘, it still had’ all our IP, product and strong talent, including an excellent [go-to-market] Machine. “So windsurf could still try to raise, sell or just continue.

That evening, however, Wang heard from Cognition Executives Scott Wu and Russell Kaplan, and he said that Windsurf leadership “took the cognition approach very seriously from the start and was immediately launched in negotiations.” In his story was what followed a hectic weekend of discussions with cognition, while considering incoming interest from other potential acquirers and meeting the remaining Windsurf engineers to convince them not to leave. (And as all that happened, “the timeline exploded with memes and comments.”)

The two companies fit well, Wang argued, partly for complementary teams.

“While [Cognition] Had invested too much in engineering, they honestly had invested at the bottom in GTM and Marketing, and our teams in those positions are nothing less than of world class, “he said.” On the other hand, we now missed a nuclear technical team, and there is no better group of AI senioreers than the Line -Up cognition has assembled. “

Moreover, Wang said that he and Wu (depicted above) were tailored to the need to “take care of all windsurf employees.”

“That resulted in an important part of the deal: structuring to give each employee a payment, to refrain from all cliffs and to accelerate all windsurfing,” he said.

The acquisition agreement was apparently signed on Monday morning at 9.30 am, shortly thereafter announced to the team announced to another all-hand and then announced to the public shortly thereafter.

In An interview with BloombergWang described that on Friday all-hand as “probably the worst day of 250 human lives”, followed on Monday by “probably the best day”.