Vinod Khosla Says Windsurf Founders Left Team ‘Behind’

The founders of Windsurf, the now much-talked-about AI startup, are having a roller coaster couple of weeks.

Varun Mohan and Douglas Chen nearly struck a deal to sell the company to OpenAI for $3 billion before it suddenly fell through.

Then, the two decamped to Google DeepMind, leaving the rest of the company scrambling. Windsurf’s remaining executives struck a deal with another AI startup, Cognition, the following weekend, which its new CEO, Jeff Wang, described as “crazy.”

Now, the legendary venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has weighed in on the drama, criticizing the founders’ decision to leave.

Khosla was the first venture capital investor in OpenAI, and Khosla Ventures invested $50 million in the company in 2019, which The Information later reported gave him a 5% stake in the company at the time. Khosla Ventures is also an investor in Cognition.

“Windsurf and others are really bad examples of founders leaving their teams behind and not even sharing the proceeds with their team,” Khosla said in an X post. “I definitely would not work with their founders next time.”

Khosla’s remarks were in response to a clip from the “Twenty Minute VC” podcast featuring the Cognition founder Scott Wu, who said, “There’s an unspoken covenant that as a founder, you go down with the ship.”

“And I think that, for better or worse, it’s changed a bit over the last year, and I think it’s a bit disappointing to be honest,” Wu said.

One X user suggested Khosla’s response was hypocritical, prompting him to expand further on Sunday.

“Absolutely not hypocritical about it. I would not work with the WeWork founder either! Working without trust is a sure way to be unhappy,” Khosla said on X.

“I honestly asked myself if I made $1b on this ‘deal’, would I accept it and be quiet or fight for the rest of the team? Or give part of my money to the rest of the team? Hard to say without being in the situation but I feel I’d definitely fight for those left behind,” he added.

Khosla, Mohan, and Chen didn’t respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Wang, who previously served as head of business at Windsurf, recounted on X on Saturday his experience informing the Windsurf staff that not only had the OpenAI deal fallen through, but its two cofounders had left.

“The mood was very bleak,” Wang wrote. “Some people were upset about financial outcomes or colleagues leaving, while others were worried about the future. A few were in tears.”

Still, Wang praised Mohan and Chen. He said they were “great founders and this company meant a lot to them, and it should be acknowledged that this whole situation must have been difficult for them as well.”