Three weeks after acquiring Windsurf, Cognition offers staff the exit door

Just three weeks after completing its acquisition of rival AI coding startup Windsurf, Cognition has initiated significant staffing changes, laying off 30 employees and offering buyouts to approximately 200 remaining team members, according to a report by The Information.

This move marks another chapter of instability for Windsurf employees, who have navigated a series of dramatic corporate events. The company was initially poised for acquisition by OpenAI. However, this deal dissolved, leading to its CEO, co-founder, and research leads joining Google in a substantial $2.4 billion reverse-acquihire. Subsequently, Windsurf was acquired by Cognition, the creator of the AI coding agent Devin.

At the time of the acquisition on July 14th, Cognition had publicly stated its commitment to compensating 100% of Windsurf employees financially. Cognition Labs had also emphasized on social media its excitement to integrate Windsurf’s “world-class people” to enhance its development of sophisticated coding tools.

However, recent developments suggest that Cognition’s primary interest in the acquisition may have been Windsurf’s intellectual property rather than its talent pool.

Employees were reportedly given until August 10th to decide whether to accept a buyout package, which includes nine months of salary. For those who opt to remain with Cognition, the company has outlined stringent working conditions. These include a requirement to be in the office six days a week and working more than 80-hour weeks, conditions that are increasingly becoming the norm among employees at leading AI firms.

In an email viewed by The Information, Cognition CEO Scott Wu stated, “We don’t believe in work-life balance—building the future of software engineering is a mission we all care so deeply about that we couldn’t possibly separate the two.”

TechCrunch has reached out to Cognition for further comment on these developments.