A few days after the AI Windsurf coding launched He began to x To offer more details about the drama and uncertainty about the contract.
Windsurf was previously reported as acquisitions with OpenAI, but this contract fell apart, and Google Deepmind as an alternative of employing the general director of the Varun Mohan Startup, co -founder of Douglas Chen and some of his best researchers. Google supposedly a license for Windsurf technology under a contract value $ 2.4 billion – but does not accept shares in the company.
It looked like the latest trend of “reverse buyers”, in which large technology firms attempt to avoid antitrust control by employing key members of the startup team and licensing their technology, as an alternative of purchasing startups.
But what happens to startups and employees who are lagging behind? As we discussed in the latest episode of Equity, one startup founder compared the departing Windsurf managers to the captain abandoning his crew on the sore ship.
Wang, who was the head of Windsurf’s business, became the temporary director of the company after Mohan’s departure. In his post on X he offered compassion to Mohan and Chen, whom he described as “great founders” in the situation that “it had to be difficult for them.”
Despite this, Wang talked about the All Hands meeting on Friday, June 11, in which the majority of team members expected to listen to about the takeover of Opeli. Instead, he needed to share news about the Google agreement and the resulting departure.
“The mood was very gloomy,” Wang said. “Some people were concerned about financial results or colleagues, while others were worried about the future. A few were in tears, and the questions and answers were understandable hostile.”
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According to Wang, although the company “lost great people and made a serious blow to morale”, it still had “all our IP, product and strong talent, including perfect [go-to-market] Machine. “Windsurf can still try to boost extra money, sell or just proceed.
That evening, Wang heard from cognitive directors Scott Wu and Russell Kaplan, and said that the leadership of Windsurf “took a cognitive approach very seriously from the very beginning and shot for negotiations.” It was told that there was a crazy discussion weekend with Poznań, while considering the interest of other potential buyers and a meeting with other Windsurf engineers to not persuade them not to go away. (And the way it happened: “The timeline exploded with memes and comments.”)
Wang argued that each firms are well matched, partly because of complementary teams.
“One sec [Cognition] They exceeded engineering, to be honest in GTM and marketing, and our teams in these functions are nothing but world -class, “he said.” On the other hand, we lacked the main engineering team and there is no better group of AI engineers than to know the composition in the composition. “
In addition, Wang said that he and Wu (in the photo above) were leveled with the have to “take care of all Windsurf employees.”
“It caused that the key part of the contract: constructing it to pay to each employee, the waiver of all cliffs and accelerating all the acquisition of the Windsurf capital,” he said.
The acquisition agreement was apparently signed at 9:30 on Monday morning, announced to the team shortly afterwards in other hands, and then announced publicly soon after.
IN Interview with BloombergWang described that Friday’s all hands as “probably the worst day of 250 people”, and then on Monday “probably the best day”.