Ah, this sheds light on the silence around the Windsurf acquisition:
OpenAI and Microsoft are at a standoff over the terms of the startup’s $3 billion acquisition of the coding startup Windsurf, the people said. Microsoft currently has access to all of OpenAI’s IP, according to their agreement. It offers its own AI coding product, GitHub Copilot, that competes with OpenAI. OpenAI doesn’t want Microsoft to have access to Windsurf’s intellectual property.
I can't tell if that line came from the unnamed sources or is just the journalist's understanding, but it seems pretty clear to me that OpenAI did not spend $3B for the source code of an IDE. They wanted the employees and customers to kickstart a shift to an enterprise product focus, which doesn't sit well with MSFT (who entered into a partnership with what they believed was a research lab that would supply things they could upsell in github and office365).
One theory is it's Sam Altman's way of wresting control away from the non-profit through diluting the shares.
It's not like he hasn't done such things before.
Sama seems disinclined to follow the straight and true. Apparently he can’t get what he wants without re-routing his partner’s buy-in buttons. Could he have founded OpenAI without all this drama? Was there no way to raise the money he needs without all the smoke and mirrors?
I’m a fan of the ChatGPT product but he feels like a David Mamet creation.
> Microsoft currently has access to all of OpenAI’s IP, according to their agreement. [...] OpenAI doesn’t want Microsoft to have access to Windsurf’s intellectual property.
Why does OpenAI then buy Windsurf if such an agreement is in place?