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OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

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Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#51

Post by _jab »

jonny_eh wrote: post #40
metadat wrote: post #21

It's another Character.ai situation [0]. Unfortunate for any employees who aren't founders or researchers, as they don't get any payout or a nice new job from this exit structure. In fact they lose their whole time invested at the company. What a harsh time to work for an AI startup as a rank and file employee! I wonder how the founders justify going along with it inside their mind. [0] Character.ai CEO Noam Shazeer…

The “leftover” employees at Character were NOT screwed over. Options were converted to cash at the deal’s valuation. Hopefully Windsurf employees are treated well here. Note: I worked at Character until recently.

On the flipside, I’m pretty sure the investors got screwed.

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#52

Post by bix6 »

Ancalagon wrote: post #32
bix6 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can shareholders sue? I presume the only avenue is IP since that belongs to the company? Or the non-exclusive license somehow negates that? Brutal.

I actually don't know if there's much that can be done unless there's some non-competes in those employees' contracts which are usually not very enforceable outside of finance iirc.

Non competes aren’t enforceable in California but the company owns the IP so I’m curious about this license loophole they are using.

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#54

Post by bix6 »

khazhoux wrote: post #44
Ancalagon wrote: post #3

So Google, Meta, and Microsoft will just hollow out the best AI startups of their talent instead of buying them - out of fear of monopoly lawsuits I'm assuming? Nice plan I guess. Kind of obvious to spot though.

“Buying the startup” just means handing over megabucks to do-nothing investors. If Google isn’t buying any product or technology, why should investors get a talent fee?

Do nothing investors who enabled the company to reach this point? Employees who chose lower salaries in expectation of shares being worth something? Come on now.

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#55

Post by bix6 »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #49
Ancalagon wrote: post #3

So Google, Meta, and Microsoft will just hollow out the best AI startups of their talent instead of buying them - out of fear of monopoly lawsuits I'm assuming? Nice plan I guess. Kind of obvious to spot though.

There are many AI startups and we are just in the beginning of learning how to use them. There will be some stupid company like those you’ve listed that figures out a way to use AI that is far better than any other implementation, and Google, Meta, and Microsoft may go the way of Yahoo and AOL, but we’ll see

Doesn’t seem like it. Antitrust has no teeth so the mega corps are just buying all the talent with life changing cash.

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#56

Post by extr »

IMO other than the Microsoft IP issue, I think the biggest thing that has shifted since this acquisition was first in the works is Claude Code has absolutely exploded. Forking an IDE and all the expense that comes with that feels like a waste of effort, considering the number of free/open source CLI agentic tools that are out there.

Let's review the current state of things:

- Terminal CLI agents are several orders of magnitude less $$$ to develop than forking an entire IDE.

- CC is dead simple to onboard (use whatever IDE you're using now, with a simple extension for some UX improvements).

- Anthropic is free to aggressively undercut their own API margins (and middlemen like Cursor) in exchange for more predictable subscription revenue + training data access.

What does Cursor/Windsurf offer over VS Code + CC?

- Tab completion model (Cursor's remaining moat)

- Some UI niceties like "add selection to chat", and etc.

Personally I think this is a harbinger of where things are going. Cursor was fastest to $900M ARR and IMO will be fastest back down again.

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#58

Post by pydry »

metadat wrote: post #21

It's another Character.ai situation [0]. Unfortunate for any employees who aren't founders or researchers, as they don't get any payout or a nice new job from this exit structure. In fact they lose their whole time invested at the company. What a harsh time to work for an AI startup as a rank and file employee! I wonder how the founders justify going along with it inside their mind. [0] Character.ai CEO Noam Shazeer…

This might be the beginning of the end of tech VC startups in general.

High interest rates make VC funding more expensive and now bigtech can swoop in, poach all the necessary staff and deprive investors of an exit.

What is the point any more?

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#59

Post by dalemhurley »

Cursor (and Garry Tan’s X post) has shown us that the VC money is propping up these companies astounding growth, the only way for them to become profitable is to increase the cost per a request, which means they need to innovate like crazy.

The moat is paper thin.

GitHub has open sourced copilot.

The open source community is working hard on their own projects.

No doubt Cursor is moving fast to create amazing innovations, but if the competition only focuses on thin wrappers they are not worth the billion dollar valuations.

I love watching this space as it is moving extremely fast.

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#60

Post by cellis »

asdev wrote: post #30

I never knew anyone who used Windsurf. These AI acquisitions have been unbelievable(in a bad way). WIX acquired some garbage Lovable.dev clone for 80 million. I think many of us are waiting for this bubble to pop(economy will likely pop too)

Base44 is absolutely not garbage. I’ve tried it and can say it’s as good or better of a vibe-builder than Lovable or Bolt. Have you benchmarked it against the competition or can you otherwise substantiate the “garbage” claim? FWIW I do know one amazing engineer using Windsurf
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