$5 Billion Weekend?

Before you head into another Monday pretending not to be panicked about your backlog, let’s talk about how three tech giants scrambled to grab the same startup and threw billions at it in just 72 hours.

It happened last weekend.

Yes, just three days and it involved OpenAI, Google, Cognition, and one tiny but mighty startup called Windsurf. Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of Windsurf. You’re about to.

Let’s break it all down like you and I are sitting at a coffee shop and you just asked, “Dude, what the heck happened with all that Google, AI, Windsurf stuff?”

What happened? Okay, picture this:

It’s Friday, July 11, 2025. OpenAI is about to buy Windsurf for $3 billion. Everything’s looking good until Microsoft, OpenAI’s sugar daddy investor, steps in and goes, “Hold up, we’re not cool with this. That IP? That’s ours too.” Basically, they were hinting that Windsurf’s tech may have been trained on Azure and possibly overlapped with stuff Microsoft already helped build through OpenAI.

Boom, deal dead. Windsurf is suddenly like a bride left at the altar.

Within hours, Google DeepMind jumps in like a jealous ex with a private jet. They don’t buy the company. No, no, they do a reverse acqui-hire, fancy talk for “we’ll take the founders, thanks.” Google throws $2.4 billion at Varun Mohan and Douglas Chen, the two co-founders of Windsurf, and licenses the tech. Not buys, licenses. As in, “We can use it, but we don’t own it.”

What about the rest of the 250 employees?

By July 14, Cognition, the AI startup behind the now-famous Devin, the AI software engineer swoops in and buys the rest of Windsurf. The team, the customers, the IP, the whole kitchen sink.

In 72 hours, Windsurf got split like a group project gone wrong:

• Google got the idea guys and a license.
• Cognition got the entire group chat and code repo, the digital folder where developers store, manage, and track all the code for a project. If you’re writing a novel, your code repo is the Google Doc.
  

Let’s get to know the billion-dollar players:

• Varun Mohan and Douglas Chen: MIT-educated AI prodigies who built Cascade, an AI-native coding environment that didn’t just suggest code. It could actually write it, run it, debug it, and take your job.
  
• Jeff Wang: The Windsurf Head of Biz who suddenly found himself running the company after the founders left. Poor guy had to play CEO and firefighter all weekend until Cognition scooped them up.
  
• Scott Wu and Russell Kaplan: The Cognition guys. Smart enough to wait until the dust settled, then made the cleanest $3B move of the year. Waited just long enough for the chaos to peak, I'm talking Netflix episode long.

You might be thinking, “Wait, Google paid $2.4B for two guys and a license? Are they okay?” It’s a valid question.

But in AI, the real gold isn’t software or code. It’s brains with speed. Founders who know what to build, how to lead a team, and can do it all again. That’s what Google paid for. Not the past, the potential. Think LeBron and Steph Curry co-signing to your team in their prime.

Cognition, on the other hand, wanted the whole working system. They already had Devin. Now they get Cascade, 250 employees; top-tier engineers, product managers, designers, and go-to-market experts. Including real customers, and all the tech that didn’t walk off with Google.

What do these companies do again?

• Windsurf: Built “Cascade,” an Integrated Development Environment powered by AI agents. A smart coding tool that helps you write and fix code using AI assistants.
• Cognition: Created Devin, the world’s first real AI software engineer. Think AI that writes and ships products, not just code snippets.
• Google DeepMind: Building Gemini and now trying to catch up with OpenAI and Cognition.
  

Between you and I:

Are you the asset, or is it your company? Google didn't buy Windsurf. They acqui-hired two guys who could rebuild Windsurf in their sleep.

Speed is everything. Can your team react, pivot, and execute in 72 hours? Windsurf’s team did or got scooped up by someone who could.

Is what you’re building scary enough that the giants would rather buy you than compete with you? Because “nice” startups are cute but scary ones get paid.

Don’t just chase titles, chase momentum. The 250 Windsurf employees didn’t get Google paychecks but they did land at Cognition.

This whole saga wasn’t about who had the best product, it was about who could build the future fastest.

Google paid billions for people who could do it again. Cognition paid billions for the ones already doing it. And OpenAI? They watched it slip away because of boardroom politics.

So as you roll into the workweek, AI or not, maybe ask yourself:

“Am I building something people want to buy, or something they’ll regret not buying when someone else does?”

- Matt Masinga