Wow, this is a pretty fascinating twist. First OpenAI's $3B deal falls through, and now Google swoops in to poach the key talent anyway? Classic big-tech maneuvering
OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google
461–470 of 712 posts
Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google
#462I was so surprised (or shocked) to hear that Windsurf was getting acquired for 3 billion dollars, I made an HN post asking about the truth of that news - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43933825 . HN's system didn't like my tone I guess and removed it, lol. But in any case, I just can't see how AI code editors like Windsurf or Cursor, without any proprietary model, can be valued at billions. What's the underlyin…
Maybe Google sees something under the hood
Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google
#463Cursor (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…
It feels like we're watching a hype cycle in real time
Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google
#464This whole situation feels shockingly close to the Meta/Scale situation, where founders and specific employees were plucked out, and effectively gutted any future prospects for the company. At least in the Scale case there seemed to be some form of payout to employees and equity holders, but this takes it a whole lot further by just throwing out all other employees. There is supposed to be the concept that “all commo…
Yep, if investors and early employees keep getting left out in the cold while execs get a soft landing at Big Tech, it's going to shake a lot of trust in the startup game
Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google
#465So 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.
The big players know regulators are watching, so they're doing everything but the formal acquisition
Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google
#466Sounds like the death knell for Open AI. They can't outswim the FAANG sharks. Once Microsoft is out, it's over for them.
Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one ever shares their great and shipped products. AI built slop is for generating hype not revenue or users.
Not the OP but this is smth I've vibecoded using cursor: https://bestphoto.ai/ MRR ~$150. It basically started as a clone of my other site: https://aieasypic.com (MRR 2.5k, 5-8k/mo rev) since I was having trouble keeping code context in mind and claude was pretty bad at doing full features with the tech stack I used for that site(Django BE, NextJS FE) making adding new features a pain, so I completely switched to a s…
Those are exactly the kind of AI slop products I would expect to be vibe coded. You've created yet another wrapper around LLM APIs where the business model is charging a premium over existing services. Your revenue depends on the ignorance of customers to not realize they can get the same or better service for cheaper from companies that actually do the hard work. I bet SEO hacking is really important to you.
It's irrefutable that AI tools can be used to create software that generates revenue. What's more difficult is using them to create something that brings actual value into the world.
Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google
#468Earlier 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.
“We underpaid you relative to what price you were able to command on the market, and you left, how DARE you!”
“We spent our time and money helping you and now you leave taking everything with you and leaving us with nothing”
You think the only people in a company that matter are a few founders? It’s ok to screw over everyone else?
Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google
#469IMO 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…
>What does Cursor/Windsurf offer over VS Code + CC? A lot of devs are not superstar devs. They don't want a terminal tool, or anything they have to configure. A IDE you can just download and 'it just works' has value. And there are companies that will pay.
You don't need to be a superstar dev to use CC. If you can use chat window you can use CC.
Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google
#470So 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.
This is the direct result of regulations. As usual regulations backfire. Expect more regulations to address this, surely they won’t backfire as well.
This is overly reductionist. The are plenty of laws that work well.
Any time I hear someone talk about more or less regulation, instead of talking about better or worse regulation, I suspect they are ideologists and trying to shift the narrative, or else they would be able to criticise based on actual merit.