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OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

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Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#221

I need someone to convince me this isn't one of the biggest waste of money on an acquisition. If OpenAI can't build an official IDE for less than 3 Billion then what are they even doing? Windsurf can't have that high of a userbase that you feel the need to pay for it.

> one of the biggest waste of money on an acquisition. I think that was when intel acquired McAfee for 8B in 2010.

MSFT buying Nokia for $7B is runner up. But at least it could have worked if MSFT hadn't burned it down. Intel and McAfee makes no sense at all.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#224
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VSCode is still miles behind for .NET and C++ tooling, have a bit of fate on VS team.

What’s the use of being miles ahead if you’re traveling in the wrong direction?

Tell us you're not developing for microcontrollers without telling us you're not developing for microcontrollers.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#225
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know the cash / equity split?

I do know that OpenAI doesn't have 3B in cash to just throw around. So, I'd be inclined to believe the vast majority of the deal is stock (or whatever that is called pre-IPO).

Companies don't do these acquisitions with cash on hand. It's OpenAI and the whole pool of their creditors and investors.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#226
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t know how OpenAI is paying. A lot of comments seem to be assuming this is an all-cash deal. We have no evidence for that.

These deals are mostly in stock, not cash. $3b cash is not something most companies can afford to part with, and additionally, making deals that are stock-heavy creates an incentive for the leadership of the acquired company to keep working towards the general interest of OAI, and not instantly retire.

> These deals are mostly in stock, not cash

How are you defining “these deals”? Most acquisitions of startup by larger companies in America over the last decade, at least, have been all cash.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our plan is to be a superset of Cline and Roo's features (we already have all the major features from both) [0] We also have our own provider, which means no need to bring your own API keys (you can if you like, but it is batteries included by default) and we're not charging anything on top of the API pricing. Instead of monetizing on individual developers, we want it to be free for them and make money eventually off…

I can't find any reference to Cline/Roo charging anything on top of API pricing. Not sure how they'd do it considering you bring your own API keys. Can you link me to a resource?

GP didn't say Cline/Roo charged anything on top.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#228
IMO, there are few solid reasons to purchasing this tool 1. windsurf has lot of insights into how developer writes code, style, problem etc 2. for the prompt engineering that went into generating the code 3. only microsoft and cursor has the moat so they need to compete at the applications level not model level.

My prediction is anthropic, google or amazon will buy cursor. The next logical step to coding is building apps.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#229
post #90
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For someone that never used windsurf, what features does it have that GitHub copilot does not? Reading their webpages I didn't spot any "killer feature" that would convince me to switch. I always felt that cursor and windsurf should be just extension to vscode instead of a fork. Was there some missing functionality is vscode that was missing? Is it still missing? There are some extensions that work in this way and al…

The differentiator of Cursor is it’s way smarter at basic code completion than GitHub Copilot. I pay for Cursor instead of GitHub Copilot even though I get the latter for free from open source contributions, and I made that decision after five minutes of usage after using Copilot for what, more than a year? I won’t even talk about how Cursor guesses where I’m going to edit next and makes the correct edit most of the…

Same. Cursor might be the only tool I've purchased a year's subscription to before the end of my free trial.

I've tried just about every model on its own over the years, and yet there's something about the Cursor workflow that frequently still gives me chills when it shows me again that it had clearly anticipated what I would think next in a way I just don't experience with other tools.

Holistic seems like the right word?

If it's all smoke and mirrors as some folks imply, then it's Penn and Teller level smoke and mirrors. Beware those who tell you that they could duplicate anything of value in a weekend.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#230

Windsurf and Cursor feel like temporary stopgaps, products of a narrow window in time before the landscape shifts again. Microsoft has clearly taken notice. They're already starting to lock down the upstream VSCode codebase, as seen with recent changes to the C/C++ extension [0]. It's not hard to imagine that future features like TypeScript 7.0 might be limited or even withheld from forks entirely. At the same time,…

>Ultimately, the future isn't about a smarter editor, it's about a smarter teammate. Tools like GitHub Copilot or future agents will handle entire engineering tickets: generating PRs with tests, taking feedback, and iterating like a real collaborator.

I think a few options for this already exist, but honestly they don't go far enough. I want something like an AI scrum master, for hyper agile teams, that can task out smaller tickets to AI sub agents.

I would integrate this thing in with something like an AI powered Jira.

Two arguments exists.

1. I need to take about 6 months off and start building this now, even if I don't know exactly how I'll get it done. Between a combination of vibe coding and maybe a bit of outsourced work ( looking at Eastern Europe), I could get this done with my personal funds.

2. To do this properly would probably require tens of millions of dollars. I'll probably burn myself out trying to do it solo without ultimately getting to a sellable product.

The biggest issue here is to actually scale I would need to either have users bring their own LLM keys or have tens of thousands to spend on LLM tokens.

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