What the Windsurf sale means for the AI coding ecosystem • Hacker News Board

Re: What the Windsurf sale means for the AI coding ecosystem

#51

Post by rohansood15 » Sun, Aug 10, 2025, 6:30 AM UTC

CalChris wrote: post #23

rohansood15 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1.2B went to investors, the remaining 1.2B was actually an incentive/payout for the founders/employees that google took. The company basically has whatever money it had in the bank, plus a bit more from Google - but no investor liabilities.

Ok, Google can pay $1.2B to the CEO and key employees to get them to walk. The other $1.2B is for the Windsurf IP and it cannot go directly to the investors. It has to go through the company where it is first revenue and then an asset. But Windsurf could distribute profit at this point before the Cognition deal. I guess this is where the preference rights got exercised. The tweet from employee #2 said his stock wasn'…

The company can also issue a share buyback. Doesn't have to be profits. And you're right about the preference rights.

Employees who haven't vested their shares can't complain/enforce tag-along/sue for minority investor rights.

Re: What the Windsurf sale means for the AI coding ecosystem

#52

Post by thrown-0825 » Sun, Aug 10, 2025, 8:02 AM UTC

OldfieldFund wrote: post #47

thrown-0825 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the same people, so yes.

well the VCs, yeah. But the M7 are doing some actual work. DeepMind is doing some projects that are changing the world for 10 years. Like their research in protein folding, general chemistry physics, biology, medicine.

protein folding has nothing to do with llm vaporware

Re: What the Windsurf sale means for the AI coding ecosystem

#53

Post by aprilthird2021 » Sun, Aug 10, 2025, 7:02 PM UTC

ankit219 wrote: post #44

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's deal with Windsurf is structured that way because they likely could not directly acquire, or were not confident that it would have gotten past the antitrust. A signal for that is such deal increased in last few years after FTC refused to allow any deal over $100M or so. Any proof of this? It's quite speculative. Also FTC scrutiny is not escaped if you only acquire a percentage of a company to avoid antitru…

This is speculated as the reason as blockbuster acquihires have risen: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-07-17/meta-g... https://natlawreview.com/article/rise-acquihiring-post-layof... https://bowoftheseus.substack.com/p/update-the-gut-and-licen... Meta's case is interesting. In the past, for what they want, I still feel they would have just acquired the company and be done with it. Now, they explored m…

Did you read the articles you linked? Here's one except:

> The data shows that after four years of being frozen out of the acquihire market by former FTC chair Lina Khan, big tech companies are back with a vengeance

That (and the accompanying chart showing total acquihires over years) says acquihires existed before regulatory scrutiny, stopped while that scrutiny ramped up, and came back when the scrutiny went away. Not what you suggested, that it's a novel tool used to avoid scrutiny.

I appreciate how you feel, but it's based on ultimately, just a feeling, not any statistics (the stats in your linked articles paint another picture entirely about acquihires). Also, there is the basic fact that FTC scrutiny cannot be avoided by minority ownership or acquihiring alone. They have the right and ability to investigate even minority purchases of stake in a company. This is a good case study of that: https://www.faegredrinker.com/en/insights/publications/2018/...