[ankit219]

This is a highly speculative post, with conjectures presented as facts. Some things that irked me:

- Cursor did not hire Anthropic's "researchers". It hired the guys who built Claude code (PM and dev). Who then promptly went back to Anthropic in 14 days. A researcher for Cursor need not come from Anthropic either. One high profile recruit for them was Jack Gallagher (Midjourney) who is probably one of the best at RL.

- Google's deal with Windsurf is structured that way because they likely could not directly acquire, or were not confident that it would have gotten past the antitrust. A signal for that is such deal increased in last few years after FTC refused to allow any deal over $100M or so. Microsoft has done such deals too. Meta would have acquired scale ai in older times. Not sure with Openai, but they arent as scrutinized as Google for such deals. To imply that this means Google did not care about ARR is not justified. and then google licensed Windsurf's IP too.

- Openai's agreements with Microsoft is more probable than they did not complete the acquisition because of negative gross margins.

- Plus, the old adage about how a growing startup is worth more because of a stellar team. You strip a team away and still get 2x multiple is sure enough valuing the current ARR highly.

I thought the userbase is valuable. A sale at this point made sense because they might not have been to get the money if they waited a year. Reasons laid out in the article are not why I think so.

[raincole]

Every single article on this domain is just human hallucination. Little to none research and due diligence done.

By the way, The latest article before this one was "tokens are getting more expensive". (One week before $1.25/$10 GPT5 releases. Talking about aging like milk...)

[binary132]

There are tells that it’s not written by a human, but it’s harder to know how much it’s guided.

[apwell23]

> Little to none research and due diligence done.

There has never been more drama in tech. 007 level drama with chinese and russian spies.

Can we just relax and have fun.

[aprilthird2021]

> Google's deal with Windsurf is structured that way because they likely could not directly acquire, or were not confident that it would have gotten past the antitrust. A signal for that is such deal increased in last few years after FTC refused to allow any deal over $100M or so.

Any proof of this? It's quite speculative. Also FTC scrutiny is not escaped if you only acquire a percentage of a company to avoid antitrust scrutiny (as you claim Meta did, speaking of which...)

> Meta would have acquired scale ai in older times

According to reporting, Meta was solely interested in Wang and his inner circle, and did not want to acquire a significant stake in the company. Wang negotiated them UP. It's not as if they wanted to buy the whole thing at its previous valuation, let alone a higher valuation. (source: https://archive.is/ZPoNJ)

[ankit219]

This is speculated as the reason as blockbuster acquihires have risen:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-07-17/meta-g...

https://natlawreview.com/article/rise-acquihiring-post-layof...

https://bowoftheseus.substack.com/p/update-the-gut-and-licen...

Meta's case is interesting. In the past, for what they want, I still feel they would have just acquired the company and be done with it. Now, they explored more paths, and ended up negotiating for Scale AI's stake.

[aprilthird2021]

Did you read the articles you linked? Here's one except:

> The data shows that after four years of being frozen out of the acquihire market by former FTC chair Lina Khan, big tech companies are back with a vengeance

That (and the accompanying chart showing total acquihires over years) says acquihires existed before regulatory scrutiny, stopped while that scrutiny ramped up, and came back when the scrutiny went away. Not what you suggested, that it's a novel tool used to avoid scrutiny.

I appreciate how you feel, but it's based on ultimately, just a feeling, not any statistics (the stats in your linked articles paint another picture entirely about acquihires). Also, there is the basic fact that FTC scrutiny cannot be avoided by minority ownership or acquihiring alone. They have the right and ability to investigate even minority purchases of stake in a company. This is a good case study of that: https://www.faegredrinker.com/en/insights/publications/2018/...

[pyman]

> Google's deal with Windsurf is structured that way because they likely could not directly acquire, or were not confident that it would have gotten past the antitrust

I've been following OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft's acquisitions over the last five years, and the US government has given them the green light when it comes to AI. It makes sense since the FTC and DOJ directors are appointed by the government, and the government is concerned about China's advances in AI.

Also, Google pulled the same move Microsoft did with Inflection AI. They hired Windsurf's CEO, its co-founder, and other key people, and licensed Windsurfs codebase without acquiring the company. It was the smartest business move they could make.

So from a business and political point of view, your assumption doesn't hold up.

> Openai's agreements with Microsoft is more probable than they did not complete the acquisition because of negative gross margins.

This is also incorrect and the first time I've heard this reason. Executives have already told reporters that OpenAI and Microsoft have an agreement, and Microsoft doesn't want OpenAI entering the software development arena. They hold the keys to GitHub, and that's keeping everyone out for now, including Google.

> Plus, the old adage about how a growing startup is worth more because of a stellar team. You strip a team away and still get 2x multiple is sure enough valuing the current ARR highly.

I don't think so. Investors back people first, and in AI, the people are everything. Just look at how much Meta is willing to pay top AI researchers. OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google are all chasing the same talent. Knowledge is extremely valuable when it comes to AI/ML.

Google learned this the hard way when it let Noam Shazeer leave. When they realised how valuable he was, they ended up paying $2.7 billion to bring him back.

[ankit219]

Meta's case might be different, and hence i wrote it as scale would have been acquired in past times instead of an investment like they did today. For other companies, the hiring aspect avoids M&A filings, balance sheet consolidation, and still give the big tech companies access to IP and talent. Easier path to get what you want than say Wiz acquisition still waiting to be completed. The stance may have recently changed, but seems like big tech companies are not testing it. (it's also not just US, but other jurisdictions have a say too. Meta had to sell Giphy due to issue raised by UK/Europe)

Re Microsoft and Windsurf, this[1] article claims Windsurf did not want MS accessing it's intellectual property, a default condition for Microsoft OpenAI deal.

> Windsurf didn’t want Microsoft to have access to its intellectual property — a condition that OpenAI was unsuccessful in getting Microsoft’s agreement on, people familiar said. That was one of several sticking points in Microsoft and OpenAI’s ongoing talks about the AI company’s effort to restructure into a commercial entity. Microsoft’s existing agreement with OpenAI says the software giant is entitled to access the startup’s technology.

This is different from Microsoft not wanting openai to compete with Github copilot, given thats what they do with Codex anyway.

> Knowledge is extremely valuable when it comes to AI/ML We agree on that, but even in the past most acquisitions would value teams at a certain cost too. Without the team that built it, any company would struggle to get a good multiple. OP's claim was that lower multiple was cos of margins only, and i disagreed there.

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-11/openai-s-...