20VC: Cognition CEO Scott Wu on Acquiring Windsurf: The Process, The Deal, The Rationale | Did Google Overlook a Goldmine in the Core Asset and Did Founders Leave a Sinking Ship | How Cursor and Cognition Deal with Ever Increasing Reliance on Anthropic
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 18 July 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Scott Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Cognition, the company behind Devin, the world’s first AI software engineer. On Friday last week they pulled off the acquisition of the year, acquiring Windsurf, following their licensing agreement with Google. Previously a world-class competitive programmer, he was a gold medalist at the International Olympiad in Informatics and a member of the U.S. Math and Physics Olympiad teams. Before Cognition, he was a founding engineer at Scale AI, helping shape the early AI infrastructure stack.
AGENDA:
00:00 – Why are founders walking away instead of going down with the ship?
01:05 – How did Cognition pull off the $220M Windsurf deal in just 72 hours?
04:45 – What really happened behind closed doors the weekend Windsurf was acquired?
07:15 – Did Google overlook a goldmine in the Windsurf team and IP?
09:00 – Who are the 100 people that secretly shape the future of AI?
12:30 – Can application startups ever gain leverage over foundation model giants like Anthropic?
14:15 – Is coding about to be replaced by simply describing what you want?
17:30 – 50% of new code is AI-written. Where does that go next?
20:45 – “We’ve gone from 0 to $80M ARR in 6 months. Quietly.”
25:00 – Are IDEs and agents just the training wheels for the real future of software engineering?
28:20 – If you could only back one—OpenAI or Anthropic—who’s the better bet?
30:00 – Why has Cognition kept its insane growth a secret… until now?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I think there's an unspoken covenant that as a founder, you go down with the ship. For better, for worse, it's changed a bit over the last year, and I think it's a bit disappointing, to be honest. I think there's some real truth to your point that often there are actually a lot of really valuable pieces that get left behind. In AI code, to be truly honest, if there was zero progress, the world would still be entirely different. |
| 0:22.0 | This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings. |
| 0:24.0 | Now, you want to know how real time this episode is. |
| 0:26.7 | It was recorded about 12 hours before you're listening to it. |
| 0:30.5 | It was recorded late, late on Thursday night. |
| 0:33.8 | And yes, 20 VC team worked through the night to edit it and turn it around. |
| 0:38.6 | That is commitment for you. |
| 0:40.4 | The only thing that anyone wants to talk about this week is Cognition buying windsurf. |
| 0:45.3 | What happened? |
| 0:46.6 | Did the team get screwed over? |
| 0:48.2 | What happens from here? |
| 0:49.7 | How does it fit into Cognition's Grandmaster Plan? |
| 0:52.6 | What does it mean for the space in terms of who wins? |
| 0:55.4 | Cursor versus Cognition versus Claude? |
| 0:58.8 | We unpack it all today with Scott Wu, co-founder and CEO at Cognition. |
| 1:04.1 | But before we dive into the show today, Harvard Management Company is constantly seeking |
| 1:08.1 | out the next generation of great investors and entrepreneurs. |
| 1:11.3 | HMC has managed Harvard University's Endowment for nearly 50 years and was one of the first |
| 1:15.9 | institutional investors in venture capital. Their experience and long-term investment horizon |
| 1:20.7 | makes them ideal partners to get world-changing ideas on a path to viability and success. They work |
| 1:26.6 | as a true partner, providing insightful |
| 1:28.5 | perspectives to help managers succeed. I personally have had the pleasure of working with the |
... |
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