Windsurf CEO opens up about ‘very bleak’ mood before Cognition deal
Windsurf 首席执行官坦言，与 Cognition 达成交易前心情“非常沮丧”

Days after AI coding startup Windsurf announced that it’s being acquired by Cognition, Windsurf exec Jeff Wang took to X to offer more details about the drama and uncertainty around the deal.
AI 编程初创公司 Windsurf 宣布将被 Cognition 收购几天后，Windsurf 高管 Jeff Wang 在 X 平台发文 ，披露了这笔交易背后更多戏剧性的不确定细节。

Windsurf was previously reported to be in acquisition talks with OpenAI, but that deal fell apart, with Google DeepMind instead hiring the startup’s CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and some of its top researchers. Google would reportedly license Windsurf’s technology as part of the $2.4 billion deal — but not take an equity stake in the company.
此前有报道称 Windsurf 曾与 OpenAI 进行收购谈判 ，但这笔交易告吹，Google DeepMind 转而聘请了该初创公司的首席执行官 Varun Mohan、联合创始人 Douglas Chen 以及一些顶尖研究人员。据报道，作为 24 亿美元交易的一部分，谷歌将获得 Windsurf 的技术授权，但不会持有该公司的股权。

This looked like the latest in the trend of “reverse acqui-hires,” in which large tech companies seek to avoid antitrust scrutiny by hiring key startup team members and licensing their technology, rather than acquiring startups outright.
这看起来像是 “反向人才收购” 趋势的最新案例。在这种模式下，大型科技公司为了避免反垄断审查，会选择直接招聘初创公司的关键团队成员并获得其技术授权，而非直接收购整个初创公司。

But what happens to the startups and the employees who get left behind? As we discussed on the latest episode of Equity, one startup founder compared the departing Windsurf executives to a captain abandoning his crew on a sinking ship. 
但那些被“抛弃”的初创公司和员工又该何去何从呢？正如我们在最新一期《Equity》节目中讨论的那样，一位初创公司创始人将 Windsurf 离职高管比作船长抛弃沉船上的船员。

Wang, who had been Windsurf’s head of business, became the company’s interim CEO after Mohan’s departure. In his post on X, he offered some sympathy to Mohan and Chen, who he described as “great founders” in a situation that “must have been difficult for them as well.” 
莫汉离开后，曾担任 Windsurf 业务主管的王成为了公司的临时首席执行官。他在 X 平台上发帖，对莫汉和陈表示了同情，称他们是“伟大的创始人”，并表示他们当时也“一定很不容易”。

Still, Wang recounted an all-hands meeting on Friday, June 11, where most team members were expecting to hear about the OpenAI acquisition. Instead, he had to share the news about the Google deal and resulting departures.
尽管如此，王还是回忆起 6 月 11 日星期五的一次全体员工会议，当时大多数团队成员都期待听到有关 OpenAI 收购的消息。然而，他却不得不宣布谷歌的交易以及随之而来的人员离职。

“The mood was very bleak,” Wang said. “Some people were upset about financial outcomes or colleagues leaving, while others were worried about the future. A few were in tears, and the Q&A had been understandably hostile.”
“当时气氛特别压抑，”王说，“有些人因为经济损失和同事离职而心烦意乱，另一些人则对未来忧心忡忡。有几个人甚至哭了，问答环节也充满了可以理解的敌意。”

In Wang’s view, although the company “had lost some great people and taken a serious blow to morale,” it still had “all of our IP, product, and strong talent including an excellent [go-to-market] machine.” So Windsurf could still try to raise more money, sell, or just keep going.
在王看来，尽管公司“失去了一些优秀人才，士气也遭受了重创”，但它仍然拥有“我们所有的知识产权、产品和强大的团队，包括一台出色的[上市]机器”。所以 Windsurf 仍然可以尝试筹集更多资金、出售，或者只是继续运营下去。

That evening, however, Wang heard from Cognition executives Scott Wu and Russell Kaplan, and he said Windsurf leadership “took the Cognition approach very seriously from the start and launched right into negotiations.” In his telling, what followed was a frantic weekend of discussions with Cognition, while considering inbound interest from other potential acquirers and meeting with Windsurf’s remaining engineers to convince them not to leave. (And as all that was happening, “the timeline was exploding with memes and commentary.”)
然而，就在当晚，王先生接到了 Cognition 公司高管 Scott Wu 和 Russell Kaplan 的电话。他表示，Windsurf 领导层“从一开始就非常认真地对待 Cognition 的提议，并立即启动了谈判”。据他描述，接下来是一个疯狂的周末，他们不仅要与 Cognition 展开密集讨论，同时还要考虑其他潜在收购方的意向，并与 Windsurf 留下的工程师们会面，说服他们不要离职。（而就在这一切发生的同时，“时间线上也充斥着各种梗图和评论。”）

The two companies are a good fit, Wang argued, in part because of complementary teams.
王认为，两家公司之所以能很好地契合，部分原因在于双方团队的互补性。

“While [Cognition] had overinvested in engineering, they had frankly underinvested in GTM and Marketing, and our teams in those functions are nothing short of world class,” he said. “On the other hand, we now were missing a Core Engineering team, and there’s no better group of AI engineers than the lineup Cognition has assembled.”
他表示：“[Cognition] 在工程上投入过剩，但在市场推广（GTM）和营销方面却投入不足，而我们团队在这两方面绝对是世界一流的。另一方面，我们现在缺少一个核心工程团队，而 Cognition 组建的 AI 工程师团队堪称业内翘楚。”

Plus, Wang said he and Wu (pictured together above) were aligned on the need to “take care of all Windsurf employees.”
此外，王和吴（如上图所示）都认为有必要“照顾好所有 Windsurf 员工”。

“That resulted in a key part of the deal: structuring it to give a payout to every employee, to waive all cliffs, and to accelerate all vesting for Windsurf equity,” he said.
“这促成了交易中一个关键部分：我们精心设计了方案，确保每位员工都能拿到补偿，取消所有限制条款，并加速兑现 Windsurf 的所有股权，”他说道。

The acquisition agreement was apparently signed at 9:30 am on Monday morning, announced to the team shortly afterwards at another all-hands, then announced to the public shortly after that.
收购协议显然是在周一上午 9:30 签署的，随后在另一次全体会议上向团队公布，再之后就向公众宣布了 。

In an interview with Bloomberg, Wang described that Friday all-hands as “probably the worst day of 250 people’s lives,” followed Monday by “probably the best day.”
在接受彭博社采访时 ，王描述那个周五的全员大会“可能是 250 个人生命中最糟糕的一天”，而紧随其后的周一则是“可能是最好的一天”。