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Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

cognition.ai

321–330 of 447 posts

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#321
post #167
post #113

I think the amount of turmoil around these deals is giving more weight to the possibility that we’re in a massive bubble thats quite divorced from any kind of fundamentals. Sooner or later the bubbles gonna burst.

> divorced from any kind of fundamentals Anthropic ARR went $1B -> $4B in the first half of this year. They're getting my $200 a month and it's easily the best money I spend. There's definitely something there.

Microsoft is obviously the elephant in the room.

I decide to try out the agent built into VS Code. It basically matches most of these fly by night "agent" ides which are mostly just VS Code forks anyway.

But it's weird. Because Microsoft can use Anthropic's API, funnel them revenue and take a loss on Copilot.

We're all getting this stuff heavily subsidized by either VC money or big corp money.

Microsoft can eat billions in losses on this if they become *the* provider of choice.

This stuff isn't perfect, but this is the worst it'll ever be. In 2 years it'll be able to replace many of us.

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#322

Hello Cognition AI, My name is Devin; it has been for many decades now. I'm embarrassed to see you've named your product after me. It has already prompted uncomfortable jokes at my expense, and I'm sure there will be more. I now have newfound empathy for people named Alexa. For instance, people have made jokes about my name in interviews, and it's embarrassing for me, and thus awkward for everyone, and awkward intera…

Apart from this news I haven't heard about Devin in a long time. Not since the very start of the AI hype. Considering how foolish a purchase this seems to be I don't think you're going to have to worry about them Bogarting your name for too much longer.

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very productive minority.

Have we seen any examples of any of these companies turning a profit yet even at $200+/mo? My understanding is that most, if not all, are still deeply in the red. Please feel free to correct me (not sarcastic - being genuine). If that is the case at some point the music is going to stop and they will either perish or they will have to crank up their subscription costs.

It's possible Anthropic is cash-flow positive now.

Claude 3.7 Sonnet supposedly cost "a few tens of millions of dollars"[1], and they recently hit $4B ARR[2].

Those numbers seem to give a fair bit of room for salaries, and it would be surprising if there wasn't a sustainable business in there.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/25/anthropics-latest-flagship...

[2] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/anthropic-revenue-hi...

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My napkin math is that I can now accomplish 10x more in a day than I could even one year ago, which means I don't need to hire nearly as many engineers, and I still come out ahead. I use claude code exclusively for the initial version of all new features, then I review and iterate. With the Max plan I can have many of these loops going concurrently in git worktrees. I even built a little script to make the workflow b…

Again I understand and I don’t doubt you’re getting insane value out of it but if they believed people would spend $2000 a month for it they would be charging $2000 a month, not 1/10th of that, which is undoubtedly not generating a profit. As I said above, I don’t think a single AI company is remotely in the black yet. They are driven by speculation and investment and they need to figure out real quick how they’re go…

> As I said above, I don’t think a single AI company is remotely in the black yet.

As I note above, Anthropic probably is in the black. $4B ARR, and spending less than $100M on training models.

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#325
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use github copilot chat right now. First I use ask mode to ask it a question about the state of the codebase outlining my current understanding of the condition of the code. "I'm trying to x, I think the code currently does y." I include a few source files that I am talking about. I correct any misconceptions about the plan the llm may have and suggest stylistic changes to the code. Then once the plan seems correct…

Does it remember context from chat mode and when you switch to agent mode?

Yes. I think it used to be separate tabs, but now chat/agent mode is just a toggle. After discussing a concept, you can just switch to agent mode and tell it to "implement the discussed plan."

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#326
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use github copilot chat right now. First I use ask mode to ask it a question about the state of the codebase outlining my current understanding of the condition of the code. "I'm trying to x, I think the code currently does y." I include a few source files that I am talking about. I correct any misconceptions about the plan the llm may have and suggest stylistic changes to the code. Then once the plan seems correct…

Does it remember context from chat mode and when you switch to agent mode?

Yes, it can't change between edit and ask/agent without losing context but ask agent is no problem. You can also change to your custom chat modes https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/copilot/chat/chat-modes without losing context. At least that's what I just did in VSCode Insiders.

Here are some nice copilot resources: https://github.com/github/awesome-copilot

Also, I am using tons of markdown documents for planning, results, research.... This makes it easy to get new agent sessions or yourself up to context.

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#327
post #113

I think the amount of turmoil around these deals is giving more weight to the possibility that we’re in a massive bubble thats quite divorced from any kind of fundamentals. Sooner or later the bubbles gonna burst.

Yes and no. Are AI companies overvalued? Yes. Will most of them crash and burn? Yes, they will. Are the words "intelligence" or "reasoning" misused? Absolutely. Nonetheless, nobody can deny that some of these tools are useful and have demonstrated they can generate revenue like no other tool, app, or device before. There is something different from the dot-com bubble; many barriers have come down since 2000. Everyone can be connected 24/7 for a few tens of dollars a month. People trust the internet as a medium to perform transactions and access data. The real bubble is in the private market valuations, especially in the pre-seed stage. Many young entrepreneurs don't understand that raising their first round at $30M, $50M, or even $100M post-money will put a heavy weight on their shoulders approaching the Series A. Raising a funding round is a promise you make to the market. Increasingly high expectations will burn many wanna be entrepreneurs whose contribution to make things better for everyone will be lost forever. I'm deeply convinced that the reality check for all those companies is the public market, and in today's world, you can't go public after 3-5 years if your initial valuation has been built on a 20-year-long promise. All the trillion-dollar companies we know today went public a few years after their creation: Apple, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, etc. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cursor are black swans, not evidence of the power law.

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#328
post #113

I think the amount of turmoil around these deals is giving more weight to the possibility that we’re in a massive bubble thats quite divorced from any kind of fundamentals. Sooner or later the bubbles gonna burst.

Yes and no. Are AI companies overvalued? Yes. Will most of them crash and burn? Yes, they will. Are the words "intelligence" or "reasoning" misused? Absolutely. Nonetheless, nobody can deny that some of these tools are useful and have demonstrated they can generate revenue like no other tool, app, or device before. There is something different from the dot-com bubble; many barriers have come down since 2000. Everyone…

No, MS went public in 1986, so more than a decade there.

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#329
post #268
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much is it costing you?

As much as you theoretically want to spend, since it's pay-per-use. I spend $200/month by using Sonnet 4. Could be higher if you want to use Opus.

You can use Claude Code as a provider if you want it subscription based

https://docs.cline.bot/provider-config/claude-code

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#330
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that they have no moat and the underlying provider can easily cut them out.

Not really, it's pretty hard to get the editor and code editing via AI working as well as they did.

If it's so hard, then why are there multiple open source projects that are just as good?
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