Windsurf / Google Deal. Windsurf Cognition Labs Deal. Jeff Wang. Varun Mohan

Here is most of what I’ve gathered on the Windsurf / Google Deal

The founders and dozens of engineers are going to Google. This group, along with the preferred shareholders will be sharing the $2.4B headline number. The exact split is unknown but investors are making some money on the deal and the founders plus this select group are making a ton. 

That brings us to the hundreds of employees that aren’t going to Google. From what I’ve heard they are all getting screwed regardless of their vesting status. Their consolation prize is that they now own 100% of the original company. 

Windsurf’s leadership is making the argument that this is a win for those that aren’t joining Google. Their claim is that Windsurf still has a meaningful amount of revenue and a solid balance sheet. But Windsurf will now be facing intense competition from not only its former founders and engineers who are now at Google, but every other company in code gen that they were already completing with / losing to (Cursor, Anthropic, etc). Given that Google now has a license to the core technology, it is safe to assume that the Windsurf will struggle and on a longer time horizon will be a zero. 

This structure appears to be very similar to Google’s deal with CharacterAI. Google effectively acquired Noam Shazeer and left CharacterAI employee owned. The difference there is that Google had no desire to compete in AI companionship, they just wanted Noam and some key people. Windsurf is a left in a much worse position. 

My read is that the Windsurf leadership team was desperate to find a way out and facing competition from the labs and Cursor structured a deal to benefit themselves. Why they thought they could structure a deal like this and get away with it is anyones guess. At this point, I imagine all the parties involved are scrambling to try to find a resolution because if things stay as they are, it will be a massive stain on the industry.

We will probably see some more facts come out in the next 24 hours. I hope that Windsurf’s founders work quickly with all parties to properly take care of their team.