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Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

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Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#361

Post by mark_l_watson »

pm90 wrote: 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.

Of course we are in a massive bubble. At least in the US where I live, everything is about driving short term profits, with less than a little thought to what is good for the non-special interests/insider class.

I have lived and worked through two previous ‘AI winters’ and I expect the current bubble to eventually pop in a dramatic way. There will be good things produced by AI, but I am skeptical of the panic FOMO rush to AGI or super intelligence.

Look at the process of shifting manufacturing out of the USA: that was all about driving extreme wealth for special interest insiders. Sadly, most people look to their particular little political party for some form of relief - how is that working out?

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#362

Post by mritchie712 »

xnx wrote: post #22
akavi wrote: post #3

Is this purely the rump company left over from the Google pseudo-acquistion? Or does this mean that deal fell through? Does this represent confirmation that there was no pro-rata compensation to common share holders in the Google deal? I just have so many questions .

And what is Google "paying $2.4 billion in license fees" to use Windsurf's technology for, and to who? Does Windsurf have any technology?

not sure of windsurf's ToS, but Google could be after the usage data (e.g. did the user accept the suggested edit? if not, what did they change it to? etc.)

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#363

Post by iamleppert »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #70
guluarte wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also confused why Devin is worth billions

For real. According to the marketing material. Couldn’t Devon just whip up a windsurf competitor in minutes?

They are hiring software engineers! Just look at the careers page! hahahaha

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#364

Post by ghm2180 »

fzzzy wrote: post #302
6Az4Mj4D wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please share your Claude usage workflow? I use Github copilot and often tend to be frustrated. It messes up old things while making new. I use Claude 4 model in GH CP.

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…

I also do the same. I am on the 200$ maxpro plan. I often let the plan go to pretty fine level of detail, e.g. describe exactly what test conditions to check, what exact code conditions to follow. Do you write this to a separate plan file? I find myself doing this a lot since after compaction Claude starts to have code drift.

Do you also get it to add to it's to-do list?

I also find that having the o3 model review the plan helps catch gaps. Do you do the same?

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#365

Post by bananapub »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #203
physix wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks to me like the smoking gun on a type of acquisition that circumvents regulatory oversight, primarily driven by the "need for speed": https://medium.com/@villispeaks/the-blitzhire-acquisition-e3... which I first saw here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44553257

Circumvents regulatory oversight and also shafts 99% of the employees. Seems to be a backdoor way to acquire the key founders/leaders and IP (via a perpetual license) while leaving behind a desiccated husk of rank and file employees, customers, and obligations.

it's super shitty by management to flee, but given that most startups fail, this startup maybe not-failing really isn't a "shafting".

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#366

Post by code51 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #219
nikcub wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

"Sooner or later the bubble's gonna burst" and "There's definitely something there" aren't mutually exclusive - in fact they often go together. It makes me perhaps a little sad to say that "I'm showing my age" by bringing up the .com boom/bust, but this feels exactly the same. The late 90s/early 00s were the dawn of the consumer Internet, and all of that tech vastly changed global society and brought you companies li…

Anthropic is actually a good point to focus on since Claude is very good proof that it's not about the scaling. We are not quite there yet but we are "programming" through how we shape and filter the input data for training it seems. With time, we'll understand the methods to better represent.

Current situation doesn't sound too good for "scaling hypothesis" itself.

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#367

Post by dboreham »

infecto wrote: post #293
gruez wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think you underestimate the difficulty in getting the tool chain running efficiently in the IDE. It's a significant moat and I suspect their spend is too attractive to cut them off from an API especially when most of the model providers are not exactly competing fully in this space yet or at least not with the same enthusiasm.

Interesting to see multiple posts here saying this. Pretty clearly it isn't true. The IDE is owned by Microsoft. The model is owned by Anthropic or Google or whoever. A business can't be made from a thin sandwich filling between the two.

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#368

Post by mark_l_watson »

csomar wrote: post #332
nikcub wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

1. If you're maxing out your subscription, they're burning money on you. 2. They don't have a moat. DeepSeek and Kimi are already good enough to destroy any high margins they're hoping to generate from compute. Just because something is highly useful doesn't mean it's highly profitable. Water is essential to life, but it's dirt cheap in most of the world. Same goes for food.

I agree. I was experimenting with tool use with Kimi K2 APIs yesterday - very effective, and so incredibly inexpensive. I am retired, now doing independent research, so my requirements are very different than most people here who are still in the job market or growing their own business.

I find a combination of local Ollama models, with very inexpensive APis like Moonshot’s Kimi with occasional Gemini 2.5 Pro use, and occasionally using gemini-cli provides extraordinary value. Am I missing out by not using one or more $200-$300 a month subscriptions? Probably but I don’t care.

Re: Cognition (Devin AI) to Acquire Windsurf

#370

Post by rickyhatespeas »

ForHackernews wrote: post #275
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sooner or later the bubble's gonna burst" and "There's definitely something there" aren't mutually exclusive - in fact they often go together. It makes me perhaps a little sad to say that "I'm showing my age" by bringing up the .com boom/bust, but this feels exactly the same. The late 90s/early 00s were the dawn of the consumer Internet, and all of that tech vastly changed global society and brought you companies li…

I genuinely don't understand what value Cursor itself brings. It's like a wrapper for some APIs, right? As far as I can tell there's like four actual AI firms in the world and everyone else is trying to whitelabel. It reminds me of the hosting industry in the early 2000s.

The value is the UX/DevX. Though, they are essentially just a fork of VS Code so it's hard to justify using instead of VS Code + Copilot or Continue which is almost the same UX now.

That's the problem with most "AI" products/companies that still isn't being answered. Why do people use your tool/service if you don't own the LLM which is most of the underlying "engine"? And further, how do you stay competitive when your LLM provider starts to scale RL with whatever prompting tricks you're doing, making your product obsolete?

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