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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

#251
post #56

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…

Windsurf big claim to fame was that you could run their model in airgap and they said they did not train on GPL code. This was an option available for Enterprise customers until they took it away recently to prevent self hosting

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

#252

How does this happens? They raised A, B, and C round (according to CrunchBase), and then the founders just walk away and get a job/deal at Google?

Nepotism.

The same set of rules that apply to you and me are not universal.

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

#253
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give me an idea of how much interaction would be $50-$100 per day? Like are you pretty constantly in a back and forth with CC? And if you wouldn’t mind, any chance you can give me an idea of productivity gains pre/post LLM?

Yes, a lot of usage, I’d guess top 10% among my peers. I do 6-10hrs of constant iterating across mid-size codebases of 750k tokens. CC is set to use Opus by default, which further drives up costs. Estimating productivity gains is a flame war I don’t want to start, but as a signal: if the CC Max plan goes up 10x in price, I’m still keeping my subscription. I maintain top-tier subscription to every frontier service (~$…

I am curious what kind of code development you are doing with so many subscriptions?

Are you doing front end backend full stack or model development itself?

Are you destilling models for training your own?

I have never heard someone using so much subscription?

Is this for your full time job or startup?

Why not use qwen or deep seek and host it yourself?

I am impressed with what you are doing.

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

#254
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give me an idea of how much interaction would be $50-$100 per day? Like are you pretty constantly in a back and forth with CC? And if you wouldn’t mind, any chance you can give me an idea of productivity gains pre/post LLM?

Yes, a lot of usage, I’d guess top 10% among my peers. I do 6-10hrs of constant iterating across mid-size codebases of 750k tokens. CC is set to use Opus by default, which further drives up costs. Estimating productivity gains is a flame war I don’t want to start, but as a signal: if the CC Max plan goes up 10x in price, I’m still keeping my subscription. I maintain top-tier subscription to every frontier service (~$…

Thank you for your perspective. I’ve been staring at Claude Code for a bit and I think I will just pull the trigger.

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

#255
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)

Everyone has a niche, Windsurf is the only large provider if you are a Jetbrains shop.

There are some alternatives like continue.dev or Jetbrains own AI offering but no Cursor or Claude Code ( Sonnet 3.7/4) you can get through Jetbrains plugin or others, but Anthropic does not provide support same with cursor.

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

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re productivity gains, CC allows me to code during my commute time. Even on a crowded bus/train I can get real work done just with my phone.

Unless you're getting paid for your commute, you're just giving your employer free productivity. I would recommend doing literally anything else with that time. Read a book, maybe.

It's for a paid side gig.

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

#258
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…

> 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.

Windsurf’s value didn’t go to $0 overnight. The company will continue and their equity is likely still worth a decent amount wherever the company ends up.

Obviously a disappointing outcome for the people who thought life changing money was right around the corner, but they didn’t lose everything.

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

#259
post #117

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 innovati…

What was Garry's post?

I have same question

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

#260

How does this happens? They raised A, B, and C round (according to CrunchBase), and then the founders just walk away and get a job/deal at Google?

Perhaps it as combination of how much founders were diluted and how much they are being offered upfront. We are hearing about $100M signing bonuses.

It is hard to say no when Google/Meta gives you say $100M upfront and hundreds more if not Billion+ in RSUs. After 3 rounds it is not unreasonable to have only 5-10%.

10% of a company worth a few billion burning a lot of cash, that needs to keep raising more rounds i.e more dilution, may have less value than RSUs from multi-trillion dollar publicly traded liquid tech company today.

It is also quite hard to raise $5-10+Billion in cash. There are only handful of startups which have ever done so

Very few funds/investors can afford to do so large rounds. This was SoftBank's thesis for most of last decade, compete by just outfunding competing products in a market.

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