Cognition CEO on Windsurf Deal: ‘I Live for These Moments’

Cognition CEO Scott Wu is still reeling from the whirlwind weekend when his company acquired Windsurf.

“I live for these moments, honestly,” Wu told Stripe cofounder and president, John Collison, on the Stripe podcast on Wednesday.

In July, Cognition — maker of the AI coding assistant Devin — announced it was acquiring the remnants of Windsurf, a company building AI-assisted coding tools. Google had just hired Windsurf’s CEO and some key executives and licensed its technology after a planned deal between Windsurf and OpenAI fell through.

In a blog post the day the deal was announced, Wu said the acquisition included “Windsurf’s IP, product, trademark and brand, and strong business. Above all, it includes Windsurf’s world-class people, some of the best talent in our industry, whom we’re privileged to welcome to our team.”

Wu said on the podcast that Cognition acted quickly when it learned the Friday before — along with the rest of the tech industry — that the OpenAI deal had fallen through and that Google was snapping up pieces of Windsurf. That same evening, he and his team reached out to Windsurf’s new leadership. “We kind of came to this conclusion together,” he said. “Which is, if there is something to do here at all, then it has to be ready to go by Monday morning.”

The goal was partly to retain as much of Windsurf’s remaining talent as possible. If the deal had taken any longer, Wu said, employees would have started interviewing elsewhere.

Wu also saw “a nice synergy” between the two companies. While Windsurf’s core product engineering and research teams went to Google, its enterprise engineering, infrastructure, marketing, finance, and operations groups remained intact. Cognition, meanwhile, focused heavily on research and product engineering but was “a little bit behind” in scaling other functions, Wu said.

He also saw an opportunity to expand Cognition’s client base. Windsurf counted JPMorgan as a customer, while Cognition worked with Goldman Sachs.

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Beyond that, Wu said he saw opportunities to collaborate on new products. Cognition unveiled a major update called Wave 11 just days after the acquisition. He also highlighted the potential to combine Cognition’s asynchronous offerings with more synchronous ones.

Jeff Wang, Windsurf’s new CEO, earlier described the emotional moment when he announced the deal to the remaining staff.

“The applause from our people seemed to last forever, and I was on the verge of tears myself,” Wang said in an X post last month.

The deal came amid a surge in global M&A activity. Dealmaking hit $2.6 trillion in August — the highest seven-month total since 2021.

AI has been a key driver of that boom, through transactions such as Meta’s 49% acquisition of Scale AI, Salesforce’s $8 billion purchase of Informatica, and Google’s move to acquire cloud security company Wiz, which could become the largest cybersecurity acquisition in history.

As the industry grows, Wu said, the speed and scale of dealmaking will only increase. “I think basically the games get bigger,” he said.