The Limitless Podcast

Ejaaz:
So there's this company called windsurf which in

Ejaaz:
the last 24 hours got stolen from open ai

Ejaaz:
and sold not once but twice for

Ejaaz:
over 3 billion dollars and then

Ejaaz:
everyone lost their minds completely when they realized that

Ejaaz:
two of the co-founders were taking almost all of that money

Ejaaz:
for themselves and leaving the rest of the

Ejaaz:
company 250 employees in the

Ejaaz:
dust and as you can imagine josh this sparked a lot of outrage online but it

Ejaaz:
did end up having a fairy tale ending when another company swooped in and bought

Ejaaz:
the rest of the company and the 250 employees got paid josh i'm exhausted can

Ejaaz:
you tell me what's happening well

Josh:
I'm actually not sure myself this feels like an episode out of like a sitcom

Josh:
or a silicon valley episode where there's so much drama so many twists and turns

Josh:
that seemingly don't make any sense i mean it was.

Ejaaz:
Acquired i have a fun anecdote for you josh actually the office that the windsurf

Ejaaz:
company was set up in guess no

Josh:
Not silicon valley,

Josh:
oh man it's so real silicon valley was such a testament at the.

Ejaaz:
Time so i swear they

Josh:
Were they were ahead of the curve but yeah i i'm actually i'm excited to record

Josh:
this episode because i need you to explain to me a lot of what's happening i

Josh:
don't know too much about the recent news i've been very much in in the grok

Josh:
rabbit hole i know a lot of the earlier topics maybe i could help set the stage before we get into it.

Josh:
So for people who aren't familiar, Windsurf was not always Windsurf.

Josh:
It was a company that was founded in 2021 called Exifunction.

Josh:
And it was founded by two MIT graduates initially focused on GPU optimization.

Josh:
So they were a GPU optimizer company.

Josh:
They were doing absolutely nothing relative to what they're doing today.

Josh:
Three years later, they raised a series C round at $150 million,

Josh:
which valued them unicorn status, one and a quarter billion dollars.

Josh:
And that was when they rebranded to Windsurf. And Windsurf was not a GPU optimization

Josh:
company. It was instead the company that we all know today, which is the AI

Josh:
coding companion, cursor competitor, vibe coding extraordinaire.

Josh:
Exactly. Yeah. So that's when they kind of came into their final form,

Josh:
which was only last year.

Josh:
So the first three years of operation, this like strange company trying to figure

Josh:
it out last year, it was huge.

Josh:
And then we get into 2025 where their annual revenue went from not a lot to

Josh:
a hundred million plus. And I think this is where I'm going to hand it off to

Josh:
you because things got crazy.

Josh:
They turned into a really big company. They started collecting valuable data.

Josh:
Their revenue went through the roof into the nine figures.

Josh:
And that's where this drama begins.

Ejaaz:
So Josh, do you remember around that time, it became a kind of trending narrative that AI...

Ejaaz:
Coding or coders was going to replace software engineers. So companies were

Ejaaz:
getting really nervous and software engineers were getting really nervous because

Ejaaz:
they were kind of like consistently held in as like the highest regard of employee, right?

Ejaaz:
You had like knowledge workers, product managers, and then you had like the

Ejaaz:
wizards at the top that could like create software with their fingers.

Ejaaz:
And then you had AI come along and be like, well, actually, we might be able

Ejaaz:
to replace you in about six months.

Ejaaz:
So all of these companies' valuations skyrocketed, Winsurf being one of them, right?

Ejaaz:
Cursor was another popular one. And there was this massive frenzy for all the

Ejaaz:
model creator companies like OpenAI, Claude, Meta, to try and acquire one of

Ejaaz:
these companies so that they can have that feature set within their own product suite.

Ejaaz:
And OpenAI kind of came in guns ablaze and said, Winsurf, we have tried to buy Cursor.

Ejaaz:
It's not working. We need you. And we are willing to pay big bucks.

Ejaaz:
So they offered basically $3 billion and it's written here in this Reuters article,

Ejaaz:
but that's basically the headline takeaway that they offered $3 billion to buy these guys out.

Ejaaz:
And that was a huge price tag at the time, but it was what a lot of individuals

Ejaaz:
thought, a lot of people thought that Winsurf and AI vibe coding companies was worth at the time.

Ejaaz:
And the reason why it was worth this much was because it was like this magical

Ejaaz:
tool where you could type words and turn words into fully fledged apps,

Ejaaz:
games, tools, services,

Ejaaz:
Therapy apps, gym logs, whatever you might, whatever your mind could potentially think of.

Ejaaz:
It's like turning chat gbt into like this like app

Ejaaz:
maker and that as you can imagine is a billion dollar multi-billion dollar industry

Ejaaz:
and you can kind of like see on my screen here like there's this like demo on

Ejaaz:
this website where you can effectively just type words in and say like hey i

Ejaaz:
want you to create like a folder or a website that like kind of displays my

Ejaaz:
profile picture and all these kinds of things and it just

Ejaaz:
You can see it coding in real time on the left here, Josh.

Josh:
Yeah, and the interface is the thing that's different, right?

Josh:
Because when you're using ChatGPT, it can code very well, but you only have

Josh:
a text box and it kind of spits out code, but then you have to put it into your

Josh:
compiler and it creates this like very messy workflow.

Josh:
What Windsurf did is they kind of took that whole workflow and compressed it

Josh:
down into one really powerful tool.

Josh:
And that's what we're seeing here, right? It's like, this is the developers

Josh:
come all in one, build your code, generate your code, debug your code all under one roof. Right.

Ejaaz:
So you can imagine that if you are a software engineer that learns how to use

Ejaaz:
this tool or gets access to a tool like this, you can suddenly work at 10x your

Ejaaz:
speed and output, right?

Ejaaz:
So there's this term that's often used in tech, which is called like 100x engineer,

Ejaaz:
and they're usually super rare.

Ejaaz:
This tool turns everyone into 100x engineer.

Ejaaz:
And that means that you could hire probably fewer engineers to get your thing

Ejaaz:
done, or you could scale your company 100x from where it is right now,

Ejaaz:
just using existing employees and access to this tool, which is insane, right?

Ejaaz:
So you can imagine something like this is worth a ton of money.

Ejaaz:
But if you remember on a previous episode, Josh, we actually mentioned that

Ejaaz:
OpenAI wasn't just, didn't just get to where they were on their own, right?

Ejaaz:
They had some pretty impressive backers behind them. And one of their backers

Ejaaz:
was this little known company called Microsoft.

Josh:
I remember that.

Ejaaz:
You remember Microsoft? You know, they've been around a while,

Ejaaz:
right and some of the terms that microsoft struck with open air when they invested

Ejaaz:
i think something to the tune of 16 billion dollars josh or is it like 24 i

Ejaaz:
feel like i'm off by like 10 billion which is just like tens of billions tens

Ejaaz:
of billions okay let's just go with casual tens of billions

Ejaaz:
Part of the terms that they struck with OpenAI was that they get full access

Ejaaz:
and IP control over OpenAI's models up until the year 2030.

Ejaaz:
And also they get a significant chunk of revenue that OpenAI generates.

Ejaaz:
And the final point, which is what is about to cause the rift that I'm about

Ejaaz:
to describe, was access to any and all IP that they may acquire as well, Josh.

Ejaaz:
So as you can imagine, OpenAI is buying this massively valuable company,

Ejaaz:
Windsurf, for $3 billion.

Ejaaz:
And their plan presumably is to build an amazing product suite and earn tons of money from it.

Ejaaz:
But Microsoft would be eligible to owning the IP of Windsurf.

Ejaaz:
And Sam Altman, OpenAI didn't like this.

Ejaaz:
So the rumor behind the scene was that Sam Altman was negotiating with Microsoft,

Ejaaz:
basically trying to get them off the cap table with that respect and not give

Ejaaz:
them access to Windsurf.

Ejaaz:
There was a lot of back and forth, a lot of insider knowledge,

Ejaaz:
basically saying that Satya wasn't happy and that they couldn't come to an agreement.

Ejaaz:
So the rumor was Satya walked away from the negotiating table.

Ejaaz:
Now, typically, when an offer is made as big as this, $3 billion,

Ejaaz:
It comes with some terms and conditions.

Ejaaz:
And usually it comes with an expiry date.

Ejaaz:
So if, God forbid, anything goes wrong, the deal suddenly becomes off the table.

Ejaaz:
So, you know, typically anyone has kind of like an out.

Ejaaz:
And what happened after Microsoft walked away from the negotiating table was

Ejaaz:
that this $3 billion dollar offer josh expired on july 11th so literally a few

Ejaaz:
days ago and that's when all the drama started

Josh:
Unwinding expiration that is like a tremendous amount of money just to let,

Josh:
expire right i feel like if i was i mean put yourself

Josh:
in the the shoes of a windsurf employee where you own

Josh:
equity you are worth on paper now a tremendous amount

Josh:
of money and you're sitting there every day waking up looking at

Josh:
like the news like am i going to get this money or is this

Josh:
going to respond and then it expires it's like an option if you have a call

Josh:
option it just expired worthless you you're left with nothing so now the windsurf

Josh:
employee i guess i'll play that role because i'm pretty clueless in this whole

Josh:
thing i'm pretty sad but i know my company's still worth a lot so like what

Josh:
happens next to me as the windsurf employee after okay a ideal falls through i.

Ejaaz:
Want you to to envision this josh okay so you're a windsurf employee and you've

Ejaaz:
kind of been told that OpenAI is going to buy you for $3 billion.

Ejaaz:
You go to bed one day, you wake up the next, and you realize that the deal has expired, right?

Ejaaz:
And then a couple of hours, yeah, it's expired, it's done.

Ejaaz:
And then a couple of hours later, you open up your laptop and you see this tweet.

Ejaaz:
Josh, tell me about your reaction.

Josh:
Big welcome to Mohan Solo and others from the Windsurf team joining DeepMind.

Josh:
Now, if I remember correctly, the name of my CEO is the same handle that that was tagged in this post.

Ejaaz:
Exactly.

Josh:
Okay, you're good so far. I believe I've just learned that the CEO of my company,

Josh:
as well as other, I guess, higher executives.

Ejaaz:
You, the Windsurf team.

Josh:
Me. I'm joining Google. I'm going to Google today. You're joining Google.

Ejaaz:
You're joining Google, Josh. You're joining Google. Congrats.

Ejaaz:
Are they paying me $3 billion?

Ejaaz:
Exactly. And now your question is, are you paying $3 billion?

Ejaaz:
Well, what if I told you this, Josh? They're not paying you $3 billion.

Ejaaz:
They're paying you a little less. They're paying you $2.4 billion.

Ejaaz:
Okay. How does that sound? So far, so good? Yeah.

Josh:
I mean, at least better than nothing.

Ejaaz:
You'll take that. You'll take it, right?

Josh:
That'll make me multimillionaire for sure. That seems pretty chill.

Ejaaz:
Sounds good. Except that there's one clause, which is that $2.4 billion is actually

Ejaaz:
being used to buy your CEO that was just named in that tweet,

Ejaaz:
one of his other co-founders and about four researchers on the entire company team.

Ejaaz:
So this $2.4

Josh:
Billion is really just an acqui-hire for the talent.

Josh:
A hundred percent. And they're still not buying my company.

Ejaaz:
Yeah. So the long story short of this is Google announced that they struck a

Ejaaz:
deal with Winsurf, particularly the CEO, and agreed to pay $2.4 billion,

Ejaaz:
but primarily to hire Winsurf CEO and one other co-founder and a group of key researchers,

Ejaaz:
along with the non-exclusive rights, non-exclusive licensing rights to some

Ejaaz:
of Winsurf's technology.

Ejaaz:
So this is, as you said, yeah, you just got zapped. They just paid a couple

Josh:
Hundred million dollars, took the talent out of my company, and now I'm just

Josh:
left with the shell, which is devastating, right?

Josh:
I work so hard on building this. I am the reason this value exists because I

Josh:
have been working hardcore engineering on this for years, And that seems really upsetting.

Ejaaz:
Think about it. You are a founding engineer of this company.

Ejaaz:
You're a founding employee of this company.

Ejaaz:
Typically, you'd expect when you go from zero to $3 billion,

Ejaaz:
you're going to see at least some of that.

Ejaaz:
Surely, they're not going to concentrate over $1.25 billion for a single person.

Ejaaz:
Surely, that's ludicrous, right? But that's unfortunately exactly what happened.

Ejaaz:
So $2.4 billion for like five people and non-exclusive licensing rights for

Ejaaz:
like some of Windsurf's tech.

Ejaaz:
But the majority of the 250 people, its core business, the IP,

Ejaaz:
the product, the brand, and the remaining team just kind of got left to the wayside.

Ejaaz:
This was a pure play acquire.

Josh:
Yikes. And I guess we could kind of speculate on what led to this.

Josh:
Like if you remember, we actually spoke about this briefly on the show when

Josh:
OpenAI made the offer to acquire Windsurf, immediately Anthropic and a few others

Josh:
started pulling out their contracts with Windsurf.

Josh:
So they were making the product less valuable because they didn't want to give

Josh:
their data over to OpenAI.

Josh:
As a result, it lowered the valuation of the company.

Josh:
So when OpenAI then steps away and Winsurf still has to deal with the lost customers

Josh:
of Anthropic and whoever else stepped away, well, suddenly the company is worth a little bit less.

Josh:
And now Google steps in, they're like, okay, well, maybe we get a discount because

Josh:
now your average revenue or your recurring revenue is way lower than it was

Josh:
just a few months ago. So there's your 25% haircut.

Josh:
And then they're like, well, we don't actually want the business because the

Josh:
business is kind of failing. There's a lot of drama.

Josh:
There's a lot of, a lot of your larger clients aren't interested because they're direct competitors.

Josh:
So let's just take the talent. And that is such a sad thing to watch your baby

Josh:
just get pummeled over and over again by these high executives.

Josh:
But it's on, it's on brand, right? Like we've seen this happen before.

Josh:
Zuck is offering hundreds of millions to billions for employees.

Josh:
And now Google is doing the same exact thing.

Ejaaz:
I think you just highlighted a really important trend, which has just been confirmed.

Ejaaz:
By these events, Josh, which is the stars of the show for any AI company are

Ejaaz:
its researchers, are its model creators.

Ejaaz:
They're the ones that are selling for like multiples of a top NBA super sports star, right?

Ejaaz:
Hundreds and hundreds of millions, potentially billions for a single person.

Ejaaz:
That is just an absurd amount of money and has probably never been seen the

Ejaaz:
like from any kind of industry before, right?

Josh:
They're like professional sports athletes.

Ejaaz:
Yeah. Yeah, they're not worth their weight in gold. They're worth a hundred

Ejaaz:
times their weight in gold, apparently, right?

Ejaaz:
And then the second thing I think that's happening here, Josh,

Ejaaz:
is Google got a bit antsy when they saw that Zuck aggressively poached OpenAI's staff.

Ejaaz:
I think they hired like, what, 10 people? So that's probably somewhere around

Ejaaz:
$2.5 billion spent, if we want to believe the rumors of like hundreds of millions

Ejaaz:
being spent for certain researchers.

Ejaaz:
So Google's probably watched this happen over the last two weeks,

Ejaaz:
which is an insane thing to say, by the way.

Ejaaz:
This has happened over the last two weeks and thought, oh shit, we're next in line.

Ejaaz:
We're the next best model provider for many a reason.

Ejaaz:
They have access to all our AI papers so they can see who the best researchers that we have are.

Ejaaz:
And Zuck's probably reaching out to all of these. So they saw this opportunity

Ejaaz:
and jumped on it and decided to do the opposite and say, well, screw you, Zuck.

Ejaaz:
I know what you're coming for, but I'm going to jump ahead of the curve and

Ejaaz:
actually poach these guys before you do so that we keep bolstering confidence

Ejaaz:
in our team and our ability to build up the team? What do you think of that? Is that fair?

Josh:
Yeah, well, one of the biggest things I've been wondering is like,

Josh:
how are they actually worth $100 million? How are they worth a billion dollars for a single person?

Josh:
And I posted this publicly and I like did some digging and the answer is really,

Josh:
it's still a fuzzy answer, but basically they're a series of difficult problems,

Josh:
most of which are unknown that are required to be solved in order to reach this goal.

Josh:
So in the case of training improvements, I mean, we spoke about Kimi K2 yesterday.

Josh:
The reason that model performed so well is was because a novel breakthrough

Josh:
that a researcher discovered and then deployed into the code base.

Josh:
And now they have a model that competes with Claude, but it's open source and free to use.

Josh:
So that's a huge advantage. And that is a multi-billion dollar advantage at scale.

Josh:
So if you can pay one researcher to come up with a novel breakthrough like this

Josh:
and then deploy it to your code base, then suddenly you have gained billions

Josh:
of dollars of market cap. and it compounds because the scale is so large.

Josh:
And this exists all the way down the stack because when you're doing a training

Josh:
run, I mean, a lot of these companies have 100,000, 200,000 GPUs that are all

Josh:
focused on one single training run.

Josh:
And that means they can't be serving customers. They can't be serving queries

Josh:
to make the company money.

Josh:
It is a net spend that they're incurring to train this model.

Josh:
And in the case that an engineer didn't make the right decision or went down

Josh:
the wrong decision tree, that could cost them many, many billions of dollars,

Josh:
days, weeks of time. and in this world, those weeks cost a lot of money.

Josh:
So basically what I realized, what I came to consensus on is they're just giving

Josh:
themselves the best probability by having the most intelligent people on the

Josh:
specific topic of making the correct decision trees required to get to where they want to go.

Josh:
And that is why the stakes are so high. And that's why they're being paid billions

Josh:
of dollars because someone like Ilya, who has been around for a decade plus,

Josh:
is probably most likely to make the right decisions, even though it's no guarantee.

Ejaaz:
What you've just described is the wild west and

Ejaaz:
i love how you described it as kind of like an ai model

Ejaaz:
josh you were like it's probabilistic we don't

Ejaaz:
really know which path it's going to take but they're running it through this

Ejaaz:
model and they're estimating that the output would be like this so they're spending

Ejaaz:
hundreds of millions of dollars i thought it was beautifully done but josh if

Ejaaz:
you remember at the start of this episode i said that it ended like a fairy

Ejaaz:
tale So right now, we're at devastation point, right?

Josh:
I'm deep in my nightmare right now. I'm living it. I've just seen my entire

Josh:
C-suite get poached for two and a half billion dollars. I got nothing.

Ejaaz:
You just hustled for five to 10 years and you have nothing to show for it.

Ejaaz:
You have a family of kids to feed and you promised them you're going to get

Ejaaz:
them millions and nothing's happened, right?

Ejaaz:
So here's what happens next. Do you remember way back when, and I think this

Ejaaz:
is like a year ago, when the first AI engineer agent was released.

Ejaaz:
It was this thing called Devin, D-E-V-I-N. Do you remember that?

Josh:
I do, yeah. Yeah.

Ejaaz:
Yeah. Do you remember the hype that was caused because of it?

Ejaaz:
I think they released like this 30 second demo of this really slick AI agent.

Ejaaz:
It's kind of like ChatGPT, but it was just doing all the coding and engineers

Ejaaz:
lost their mind. They were like, oh my God, I would. There were two camps.

Ejaaz:
One, I would love using a tool like this and it'll enhance me 10x or whatever.

Ejaaz:
And then a vast swathe of people online that hated it and said,

Ejaaz:
there's no way it's as good as it is. and then, you know, A16Z jumped in.

Ejaaz:
I think they threw them like a $200 million check, classic A16Z.

Ejaaz:
And there was a lot of hype around this. That was like one of the clearest signals

Ejaaz:
early on that Vibe coding was going to become a thing. Do you remember that?

Ejaaz:
I do. So this company that created Devin is called Cognition.

Ejaaz:
And we saw this post come up literally the day after Google's acquisition.

Ejaaz:
So imagine you wake up one day, you realize you've lost the OpenAI deal. You're like, damn.

Ejaaz:
And then a few hours later, So you see the tweet from Logan Kilpatrick from

Ejaaz:
Google saying, hey, we bought you for $2.4 billion.

Ejaaz:
You're elated until you realize that you're not getting paid any of that stuff.

Ejaaz:
So you go into like peak depression.

Ejaaz:
And then the next day, you see an announcement from Cognition.

Ejaaz:
And this is the official announcement on Cognition's website.

Ejaaz:
Cognition acquires Winsurf.

Ejaaz:
And it's this joint announcement from the CEO of Cognition, which is Scott Wu.

Ejaaz:
And one of the co-founders and by the way this is the co-founder that didn't

Ejaaz:
get included in the $2.4 billion win self deal Man, that's got to sting Yeah,

Ejaaz:
yeah, yeah Well, calling him a co-founder is kind of like a bit of a

Ejaaz:
kind of like graceful title to give him. But his name is Jeff Wang.

Ejaaz:
And he was the recently appointed CEO after the two co-founders just ditched him, basically.

Ejaaz:
And they were like, okay, Jeff, you're head of BD, but we need you to step up

Ejaaz:
as CEO because we're going to bounce and take this billion dollar check.

Ejaaz:
But you're the new CEO. So this guy, Jeff Wang, and this CEO, Scott Wu of Cognition,

Ejaaz:
struck a deal to basically take over the remaining IP, product,

Ejaaz:
brand, And remaining team, most importantly, 250 individuals all have families,

Ejaaz:
mouths to feed, whatever lives to live and include them in this package deal.

Ejaaz:
So this was the major announcement that like kind of like swept the social media

Ejaaz:
realms and made everyone super happy and elated by this and,

Ejaaz:
you know, gave them their happy ending.

Josh:
What was the total cost that they paid? Did they announce that?

Ejaaz:
That's a great question. Let me pull up this tweet of this guy called Harry.

Ejaaz:
Oh, here we are. His title is Harry Digresses.

Ejaaz:
It wasn't official how much they got paid for, but there were some really amazing

Ejaaz:
deal terms in this, Josh.

Ejaaz:
So I'll highlight a few things here. The first one is this.

Ejaaz:
So not only were all 250 employees that were left behind going to get paid,

Ejaaz:
but they were going to have all their cliffs removed and have accelerated vesting on all their equity.

Josh:
Amazing. Okay. So they're making things right, or at least as best they can.

Josh:
It's not the $3 billion dollar offer initially but like they're doing the best

Josh:
they can and i mean as an employee of windsurf that feels really good feels.

Ejaaz:
Really good but then you're you're wondering you're wondering well how much

Ejaaz:
am i am i getting paid like like how much are we getting acquired

Josh:
For yeah let's say i had one percent i mean that's 30 million dollars i was

Josh:
about to bag and now so where are we at now it.

Ejaaz:
Might be it might be a little less but he basically does this

Ejaaz:
rundown and estimates it to be around 300 to 400 million dollars which is a

Ejaaz:
significant drop from what you are going to get paid but it's also not nothing

Ejaaz:
the other way i was thinking about it is it's probably all in cognition stock

Ejaaz:
josh there's no way they had that much

Josh:
Cash yeah just cash sitting on hand okay so my my 30 million dollars is now

Josh:
three million dollars in stock for cognition which is a private company not

Josh:
even liquid oh yeah lots of tax implications,

Josh:
okay so i mean at least i have a job i guess is where i'll end up on this is like cool.

Ejaaz:
I mean, now that I recounted to you, Josh, you're still screwed.

Josh:
You're still screwed, dude. At this point, I'm just happy to be employed.

Josh:
I'm just glad that I still have some sort of a job. I'm hopefully collecting some sort of paycheck.

Josh:
One day, it is hopeful that the stock will be worth money, and then I'll be

Josh:
able to sell it and cash out. But man, yeah, what a roller coaster.

Josh:
And it kind of sets this new paradigm, right? Where you can cut,

Josh:
you could kind of rip the value out of a company and then just kind of throw the rest to the side.

Josh:
But it's this really interesting ideological debate you could have as a founder

Josh:
of a company whose fiduciary duty is to serve right by the shareholders.

Josh:
And in this case, your shareholders are the employees that you've given stock options to.

Josh:
And in the case that they're just going away and they've destroyed the value

Josh:
of the company, they've extracted the value of the acquisition.

Josh:
They have kind of just left the shell of a company and left the people who are

Josh:
responsible for putting them in that place on the side of the road and like

Josh:
that doesn't feel very good but there's really nothing legally preventing them

Josh:
from stopping that it's really just an ideological,

Josh:
debate in this case it doesn't i mean i'd be pretty i'd be pretty upset sure

Josh:
if i'm one of the founders i just made a billion i'm now a billionaire like

Josh:
that's cool but for everyone else. It kind of leaves a bed for the.

Ejaaz:
Majority of people. Yeah, you're screwed. I don't know whether it's because

Ejaaz:
of all the time I've spent in web three, Josh, but I've kind of grown numb to

Ejaaz:
all this like terrible, appalling behavior, unequitable behavior.

Ejaaz:
And so I kind of look at a story like this and I'm like, oh yeah,

Ejaaz:
he got paid billions and left the entire company and team to dry.

Ejaaz:
Yeah. Happens all the time, I guess. But like, I'm just, I'm noticing this trend,

Ejaaz:
particularly within AI that there's this more wild

Ejaaz:
west kind of degenerate behavior when it comes to acquisitions like people are

Ejaaz:
ruthless and i don't know whether this is maybe it's my naivety when it comes

Ejaaz:
to like vc deals and acquisitions and mergers maybe i just i just don't know

Ejaaz:
maybe this happens all the time but this seems like the most extremely skewed version of this and

Josh:
We often refer to it on the show as like the game of thrones and

Josh:
i don't think there's a much better description than that where it really is

Josh:
cutthroat and this happens a lot in traditional venture and acquisitions but

Josh:
this scale i think has never been greater and that's probably what stands out

Josh:
among all of these headlines is just how much money is being made lost and thrown

Josh:
around to position yourself better to get to this point of agi but you have

Josh:
a tweet you had a post here it looks.

Ejaaz:
Funny just to round us out josh just to like put a bit of cherry on this cake

Ejaaz:
well the tldr is like everyone hates varoon mohan the former ceo who took the

Ejaaz:
1.5 billion dollar check or however much it was.

Ejaaz:
And everyone loves Scott Wu, the CEO of Cognition Lambs, who stepped up,

Ejaaz:
gave the 250 employees a salary and a lifeline and accelerated vesting.

Ejaaz:
So no matter the size of the money, shout out to Scott Wu. He didn't need to do that.

Ejaaz:
And then, you know, Varun, I wonder, you know, whether his reputation survives this.

Ejaaz:
I can see the reasoning why you would take the big check, but also like leaving

Ejaaz:
all your employees out like that to drive without even giving them,

Ejaaz:
I don't know, a couple mil is kind of insane. But here we are.

Ejaaz:
So what's the price on your reputation?

Josh:
Like, would you take a couple billion dollars to just go work on AGI and let the.

Ejaaz:
Media do a thing for a couple of weeks? I know a lot of people that would do

Ejaaz:
it. I know a lot of people. I mean, I'm one of them.

Josh:
I'd probably do that, right? Like, a couple billion dollars? I don't know.

Josh:
But also, yeah, it's tough. Well, it's funny because at this graphic,

Josh:
it's a win-win for both of them.

Josh:
Like, Varun is, or I'm not sure how you pronounce his name, but he's hated.

Josh:
The CEO of Winsurf is not liked, but he's rich. and Scott Wu is loved.

Josh:
And now he has a bunch of employees that really want to work hard to make this

Josh:
work for him and really want to add value to his company and can go to sleep

Josh:
with a good conscience knowing he's done well and he's done right by these people.

Josh:
Whereas our windsurf buddy cannot do that. So maybe he will just be,

Josh:
one of them will be crying in their $100 million mansion while the other will

Josh:
be surrounded by people who love him dearly.

Ejaaz:
Yeah, I think that's pretty much it. An absolutely outrageous,

Ejaaz:
but weirdly normal day in the world of AI, Josh.

Ejaaz:
We thank you guys for listening. We are trying out this new format.

Ejaaz:
We've said this before, where we kind of talk about trending topics and be or

Ejaaz:
try and be the first guys to talk about it and put it in front of your feeds.

Ejaaz:
We are welcoming any and all feedback. So, you know, any kind of comments or

Ejaaz:
DMs, it's all open, go for it.

Ejaaz:
And if you could like, subscribe and share it with all your friends or anyone

Ejaaz:
who you think would be interested in this kind of thing, we would be eternally

Ejaaz:
grateful and we'll see you on the next episode see you

Josh:
On the next one peace guys.

Music:
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