Windsurf SWE-1: Our First Frontier Models

Two takes here. Cynical and optimistic.

Cynical take: describing yourself as a full stack AI IDE company sounds very invest-able in a "what if they're right" kind of way. They could plausibly ask for higher valuations, etc.

Optimistic take: fine tuning a model for their use-case (incomplete code snippets with a very specific data model of context) should work. Or even has from their claims. It certainly sounds plausible that fine-tuning a frontier model would make it better for their needs. Whether it's reasonable to go beyond fine-tuning and consider pre-training etc. I don't know. If I remember correctly they were a model company before Windsurf, so they have the skillset.

Bonus take: doesn't this mean they're basically training on large-scale gathered user data?

FYI, OpenAI acquired Windsurf so valuation is not an issue.

I don’t know Varun (their founder/CEO) personally but I get highly competent vibes from him. I’d let my skeptical self lean on your optimistic take.

I don’t think the acquisition has closed yet, maybe this is still useful for a leverage/negotiating perspective. And it was almost certainly something they were working on before the acquisition anyway.

I do think that’s an overly cynical way to look at this though.