Three weeks after buying Windsurf, Cognition gives employees the exit door

Cognition, the AI coding startup that acquired rival firm Windsurf three weeks in the past, laid off 30 workers final week and is providing buyouts to the roughly 200 remaining workers on the workforce, reviews The Data.

That is the most recent bout of whiplash that Windsurf workers have confronted after a tumultuous stretch for the corporate. The startup was initially nearly acquired by OpenAI, then misplaced its CEO, co-founder, and analysis results in Google in a $2.4 billion deal often called a reverse-acquihire (the place Google employed the important thing expertise fairly than shopping for the corporate), earlier than in the end getting acquired by Cognition.  

On the time of the acquisition, Cognition acknowledged that 100% of Windsurf workers would obtain monetary compensation as a part of the deal and careworn that the corporate was excited to carry on Windsurf’s “world-class folks” to develop top-notch coding instruments. 

Now, it’s changing into clear that Windsurf’s mental property, not its expertise, was the true purchase.

In keeping with an electronic mail The Data considered, workers got till August 10 to resolve whether or not they wish to take the buyout, which quantities to 9 months of wage. Those that select to remain are reportedly required to spend six days on the workplace and clock 80+ hour weeks – draconian circumstances which have change into desk stakes amongst staff at high AI corporations. 

“We don’t consider in work-life stability—constructing the way forward for software program engineering is a mission all of us care so deeply about that we couldn’t probably separate the 2,” wrote Cognition CEO Scott Wu within the electronic mail.

TechCrunch has reached out to Cognition for extra particulars.