Cognition slashed 30 jobs last week and is handing buyouts to Windsurf staff just weeks after snapping up the startup, according to The Information.
The freshly acquired Windsurf team is being offered a buyout worth nine months’ pay, with a deadline to decide by August 10. Those who stay face a brutal schedule: six days in the office and 80+ hour weeks.
The rough patch for Windsurf started long before Cognition’s buyout. OpenAI almost bought the startup. Then Google pulled off a reverse-acquihire deal, poaching Windsurf’s CEO, co-founder, and research leads in a $2.4 billion talent grab. Finally, Cognition picked up what’s left. 
Cognition promised at the acquisition that all Windsurf employees would get paid and praised them as “world-class people.” Now it’s clear the real prize was Windsurf’s intellectual property, not the talent.
Cognition CEO Scott Wu spelled out the company’s no chill policy in an internal email:
“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 comment.
