The real value lies in a successful execution, Windsurf is live and already has brand popularity with revenue stream. When it gets acquired by a titan, the die hard fans(vibe coders) will gain new trust that the product is not going anywhere and instead has solid future(we don’t yet know if oAI plans to do Msft style acquire, extend, kill yet). Cumulatively, this actually increases the value. Also Windsurf already has established enterprise revenue, hence brand trust and experience is already there.
In summary, an existing live and proven product is worth more any day over 100% uncertainty of building a sufficiently capable team to perfectly execute the same idea in specific deadline and also have the added burden of marketing, market penetration, user acquisition etc.
Github copilot, vscode and apis through azure - basically everything through Microsoft - is.
Alternative to Microsoft's monopoly in enterprise that exists is open source.
Comparing this situation to twitter is more like if there was some chat api service, known more than twitter itself, that twitter is using/wrapping where other alternative clients exist, some with stronger popularity, some being open source.
OpenAI has a much bigger brand.