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Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

cognition.ai

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Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#51

Post by satvikpendem »

barbazoo wrote: post #13
chews wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the hosed employees that actually built a great product while their leadership sings "go on take the money and run" on their mega yacht.

Presumably the employees were compensated fairly for their work while they worked there?

And they're also now compensated by the purchase by Cognition as post says

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#52

Post by xnx »

seatac76 wrote: post #33
rvz wrote: post #17

Must have been acquired for an extreme discount far from the $3B offer from OpenAI and Windsurf's (alleged) valuation of $1.3BN. Cognition being worth $4B with Devin being raced to zero by Claude Code also undercutting both Windsurf and Cursor have a very steep hill to climb. Having both Devin and Windsurf will just make them raise more money as they burn through their operational costs.

Google already paid $2.4B out of the $3B OpenAI deal, to what I imagine is Cognition now. Cognition must have spent low 100s of Millions max.

> Google already paid $2.4B

This is unclear. $2.4B was for licensing and compensation. Why would Google have agreed to pay any significant amount to the Windsurf leftovers?

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#53

Post by TZubiri »

markbao wrote: post #42

Edit: nvm, see replies

I think google is buying windsurf, they are leaving 100% of assets and some employees, and windsurf is buying that 100m in assets + taking the leftover employee liability.

Microsoft poached the talent, devin Co. Picks up the scraps

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#54

Post by hadlock »

markbao wrote: post #42

Edit: nvm, see replies

"Acquiring" is often synonymous with "merger". Technically the surviving company acquires the other, but effectively it's a merger. Not always, but it's not uncommon to see two weaker companies merge in a competitive landscape to survive. It also counts as a liquidity event allowing employees some financial levers.

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#57

Post by xnx »

markbao wrote: post #42

Edit: nvm, see replies

> How does this transaction make sense?

The fact that it doesn't make sense with those numbers almost surely indicates those numbers are misleading.

> Google paid a $2.4 billion licensing fee

This is the reported number for licensing and compensation, but who knows what the terms really were.

> Cognition’s valuation is $4 billion

Doubtful

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#58

Post by sergiotapia »

I totally missed the puck with this one. There was a time where Cursor did not have the agent feel of a true AI pair-programming buddy. Windsurf had that magical aspect, and I totally thought they would destroy Cursor. But it took Cursor about 2 weeks by my recollection to add agent mode, and ultimately I went back to Cursor because of their better WSL2 integration.

For those brief 2 weeks, Windsurf felt like the SOTA tool. Crazy how the winds change.

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#59

Post by xnx »

brentm wrote: post #15
makin wrote: post #8

I was a bit confused as to what "Cognition" was, but they're the makers of Devin (edit: that just got added to the title, for reference), so that makes sense. Just buying the competition, the only surprise is they had more money to spend than the big ones.

Well Google did also just pay $2.5B to license Windsurf in perpetuity. Cognition is probably spending a lot less than that for just whatever it left after that type of a deal. Remaining team members, etc.

> Google did also just pay $2.5B to license Windsurf in perpetuity

Could there have been a clause that made this invalid in case of acquisition?

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#60

Post by _jab »

Let this be a learning lesson in judging these deals based on partial information. Kudos to the Google, Windsurf, and Cognition teams for keeping all of these deals under wraps until announcement (OpenAI could learn something...), but even so it's likely that we the public will never learn every detail of what transpired. I've seen a lot of harsh, misguided takes over the past few days, like that the Windsurf founders screwed over their employees, or that OpenAI reneged on the deal. In this case, this seems like a happy ending for all parties involved: congrats to the Windsurf team!
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