zlacker

>>swyx+(OP)
Incredible timeline to a $3B exit

> Windsurf began in 2021 as Exafunction, founded by MIT graduates Varun Mohan and Douglas Chen. The company initially focused on GPU optimization before pivoting to AI-assisted coding tools, launching Codeium, which later evolved into Windsurf.

> Series B (January 2024): $65 million at a $500 million valuation.

> Series C (September 2024): $150 million, led by General Catalyst, at a $1.3 billion valuation.

> May 2025: $3 billion acquisition from OpenAI

I wonder how much of the value is really from the model or the tooling around it. They all use the same models (mostly Claude, others have been horrible and buggy in my experience). Even co-pilot agent mode now uses Claude. The editor has their own LLM (?) that does the apply since LLMs often return snippets. They work well enough on Cursor. And then you have the auto-complete, which I think is their own model as well.

But the main value from me is from the agent mode and 95% of the value is the underlying model. The other stuff could be more or less a VS Code plugin. The other benefit is the fixed pricing. I have no idea how much 500 calls cost if I were to use the API, but I expect they're probably losing money.

>>bko+4W
I’ve been a WindSurf customer since day one. It was my first true AI agentic experience.

[Dev mode] While working on Alembic migrations I broke one of my migration files. After an hour of manual debugging I handed the task to WindSurf. It methodically checked every config file, applied the migrations one by one, and narrowed the issue to a single file. It rewrote the migration, verified the fix, wrote tests, ensured everything passed, and opened a PR. I reviewed it and it worked flawlessly.

Regarding the acquisition I don’t understand why OAI would pay $3 B. The team is strong, they have lots of data, and the agentic flow is great, but all of that feels commoditized.

Claude Code launched two months ago and I prefer it to WindSurf, Cursor, and Aider. Augment Code also ranks above WindSurf for me.

If I were in Sam’s place I would have doubled or tripled down on Codex CLI. Just my 2 cents.

>>sagarp+XU2
They're paying $3 billion because money is hyper plentiful for OpenAI at present. Basically because they can. Money isn't their problem right now, it's not a scarce resource (maybe it will be in the future of course). They're trying to capture and lock-in, so as the hurdles and regulations go up they're one of the huge winners left standing.

Try replacing Uber today, it's impossible. Nobody is going to give you billions of dollars to try to do it. It'd be an absolute nightmare to attempt it.

>>advent+SV2
Uber has already been replaced, at least in some parts of the world. We recently went on holiday to Malta and on check-in the hotel staff told us not to bother with Uber, Bolt worked way better and had more drivers (Bolt is a European Uber competitor based in Estonia).

So we signed up for Bolt and sure enough drivers were plentiful, the app worked great and there was no downside over Uber. I'll certainly be trying it again in future in other markets.

The reason Uber invested in self-driving cars for years is that otherwise they have no sustainable edge. It's just a taxi company, which is a low margin business. People who can make slick mobile apps are plentiful and it takes a minute or less to sign up for a new service. Uber grew to its current size by buying market share using investors dollars, which was always a time-limited strategy. Once they started having to turn a profit prices rose and their edge over their competitors was lost.