Google Snags Windsurf's Top Talent, Cognition Acquires Company in AI Coding Frenzy

Windsurf's CEO goes to Google; OpenAI's acquisition falls apart

In a shocking twist, Google DeepMind is now hiring Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and some of the startup's top AI coding talent. A Google spokesperson confirmed the hiring of Windsurf's leaders in a statement to TechCrunch. "We're excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf's team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding," said Google spokesperson Chris Pappas in an email to TechCrunch. Notably, Google is not taking a stake in Windsurf and will not have any control over the company. However, as part of the deal, Google will have a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, though the AI coding startup remains free to license its technology to others. The deal represents the AI ecosystem's latest reverse-acquihire, in which a company acquires a startup's top talent and licenses its technology but does not outright acquire the company. Google previously conducted a similar deal to hire back Character.AI CEO Noam Shazeer, as did Microsoft to hire Mustafa Suleyman. These deals have helped several big tech companies increase their position in the AI race without drawing regulatory scrutiny. "We are excited to be joining Google DeepMind along with some of the Windsurf team," said Mohan and Chen in a statement to TechCrunch. "We are proud of what Windsurf has built over the last four years and are excited to see it move forward with their world class team and kick-start the next phase." As of Friday, Windsurf's head of business, Jeff Wang, will take over as the startup's interim CEO, he announced in a post on social media. Most of Windsurf's 250 person team is not headed to Google DeepMind and will continue offering its AI coding tools for enterprise customers.

Cognition, maker of the AI coding agent Devin, acquires Windsurf | TechCrunch

The announcement comes just days after Google hired away Windsurf's CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and research leaders in a $2.4 billion deal, a reverse-acquihire that left the rest of the startup's 250-person team behind. Google's deal occurred just hours after OpenAI's $3 billion offer to acquire Windsurf expired, clearing the way for the AI coding startup to explore other options. The frenzy to acquire Windsurf represents a new peak in the insane race to develop AI coding products. "The last 72 hours have been the wildest rollercoaster ride of my career," said Jeff Wang, Windsurf's former head of business, who was made interim CEO of the startup days ago after Google hired the startup's leaders, in a post on LinkedIn. "To our new teammates at Cognition: we at Windsurf feel incredibly lucky to be joining a team that shares our vision, our deep commitment to our users, and - most importantly - our values." Cognition says it's acquiring Windsurf's IP and product, which include its AI-powered integrated development environment (IDE), alongside all of the employees who were not hired by Google. Cognition did not announce the price it acquired Windsurf for; however, the company says Windsurf reached $82 million in annualized recurring revenue (ARR), with enterprise ARR doubling quarter-over-quarter. Cognition says Windsurf's user base reached at least 350 enterprise customers and "hundreds of thousands" of daily active users. Windsurf's team will focus on building out Devin, Cognition's AI coding agent, in the intermediate term, the company said in a press release. Eventually, Cognition says it will integrate Windsurf's IP and capabilities into its own products. Over the weekend, The Information reported that Windsurf employees who had joined in the last year did not receive a payout in Google's billion-dollar reverse-acquihire. Cognition notes in its blog post that 100% of Windsurf employees will participate financially in this deal, and have vesting cliffs waived for their work to date.

OpenAI's Windsurf deal is off -- and Windsurf's CEO is going to Google

Hayden Field is The Verge's senior AI reporter. An AI beat reporter for more than five years, her work has also appeared in CNBC, MIT Technology Review, Wired UK, and other outlets. OpenAI's deal to buy Windsurf is off, and Google will instead hire Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, cofounder Douglas Chen, and some of Windsurf's R&D employees and bring them onto the Google DeepMind team, Google and Windsurf announced Friday. Mohan and the Windsurf employees will focus on agentic coding efforts at Google DeepMind and work largely on Gemini. Google will not have any control over nor a stake in Windsurf, but it will take a non-exclusive license to some of Windsurf's technology. Effective immediately, Jeff Wang, Windsurf's head of business, has become interim CEO, and Graham Moreno, its VP of global sales, will be Windsurf's new president. "Gemini is one of the best models available and we've been investing in its advanced capabilities for developers," Chris Pappas, a spokesperson for Google, told The Verge in a statement. "We're excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf's team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding." "We are excited to be joining Google DeepMind along with some of the Windsurf team," Mohan and Chen said in a statement. "We are proud of what Windsurf has built over the last four years and are excited to see it move forward with their world class team and kick-start the next phase." Google didn't share how much it was paying to bring on the team. OpenAI was previously reported to be buying Windsurf for $3 billion.

Cognition AI to buy Windsurf, doubling down on AI-driven coding

July 14 (Reuters) - Artificial intelligence startup Cognition AI on Monday agreed to acquire Windsurf, an integrated development environment platform, strengthening its position in the rapidly evolving enterprise software market. The deal follows Google's $2.4 billion deal with Windsurf last week aimed at acquiring top talent and securing licensing rights to its technology. The deal with Google marks a win for Windsurf's backers, who have raised $243 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Greenoaks, and General Catalyst, and was last valued at $1.25 billion one year ago, according to PitchBook. The move reflects a broader trend among technology giants such as Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab and Meta, which are making bold, high-value acquisitions and offering lucrative compensation packages to secure leading industry talent amid intensifying competition in the AI sector. The deal with Cognition covers Windsurf's intellectual property, product line, brand, and business operations, as well as its highly regarded engineering, product, and go-to-market teams. While the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, Windsurf brings with it $82 million in annual recurring revenue and a customer base of more than 350 enterprises. "Among all the teams in the AI space, Cognition was literally the one we have respected the most, and they are a perfect fit to bring Windsurf to the next phase," Jeff Wang, Windsurf's interim chief executive officer, said in an email to employees. In the immediate term, Windsurf will continue to operate independently, with Cognition pledging significant investment to integrate Windsurf's technology and unique assets into its own product suite, including its flagship autonomous agent, Devin. Earlier, Windsurf had been engaged in months-long discussions with OpenAI regarding a potential acquisition that could have valued the company at $3 billion, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters in June. Reporting by Kritika Lamba in Bengaluru; Editing by Mohammed Safi Shamsi Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Google hires Windsurf CEO and researchers to advance AI ambitions

July 11 (Reuters) - Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab has hired Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and select members of the coding tool's research and development team to join its DeepMind division, a Google spokesperson said on Friday, in a move to strengthen itself in the race for AI leadership. Mohan and the Windsurf team will focus on agentic coding initiatives at Google DeepMind, primarily working on the Gemini project. The development comes as tech giants including Alphabet and Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab aggressively chase high-profile acquisitions and offer multi-million-dollar pay packages to attract top talent in the race to lead the next wave of AI. "We're excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf's team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding," a Google spokesperson told Reuters. Google will not acquire any stake in Windsurf, but will receive a non-exclusive license to certain Windsurf technologies. The Verge reported, opens new tab on Friday Windsurf's head of business, Jeff Wang, has been appointed its interim CEO, and Graham Moreno, vice president of global sales, will be president, effective immediately. The majority of Windsurf's roughly 250 employees will remain with the company, which has announced plans to prioritize innovation for its enterprise clients. The move effectively ends OpenAI's planned acquisition of Windsurf. Previously, OpenAI had agreed to acquire the company for about $3 billion, Bloomberg News reported in May. Reporting by Kritika Lamba in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Artificial Intelligence

Cognition agrees to buy what's left of Windsurf

The move is the culmination of a turbulent period for Windsurf, and indicates that agentic IDEs have become a new battleground. AI builders are starving for agentic integrated development environments (IDEs), which help developers code more efficiently and thus, ideally, speed up production. And nowhere has this been more apparent than in the tug-of-war over Windsurf. In the latest development, AI coding startup Cognition has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the rival platform, giving it access to Windsurf's product, brand, and remaining employees. This comes after Google pulled Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, cofounder Douglas Chen, and several R&D employees into its Google DeepMind team in a $2.4 billion talent and licensing grab. It also follows the surprise termination of the expected $3 billion purchase of Windsurf by OpenAI that had seemed all but a done deal, but didn't materialize due to intellectual property (IP) tensions with Microsoft, a key OpenAI partner and investor. Over a period of 72 hours, OpenAI's purchase offer expired, Google hired away Windsurf's top leaders and team members, and Cognition swooped in to snap up the remaining assets.

Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf. As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others. "We're excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf's team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding," a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. "We're excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere." The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup. Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup's new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X. "Most of Windsurf's world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise," Wang wrote. Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups. This isn't the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively. Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company's code.

Cognition to buy AI startup Windsurf days after Google poached CEO in $2.4 billion licensing deal

Artificial intelligence startup Cognition announced it's acquiring Windsurf, the AI coding company that lost its CEO and several other senior employees to Google just days earlier. Cognition said on Monday that it will purchase Windsurf's intellectual property, product, trademark, brand and talent, but didn't disclose terms of the deal. It's the latest development an AI talent war, as companies like Meta, Google and OpenAI fiercely compete for top engineers and researchers. OpenAI had been in talks to acquire Windsurf for about $3 billion in April, but the deal fell apart, and Google said on Friday that it hired Windsurf's co-founder and CEO Varun Mohan. Google is paying $2.4 billion in licensing fees and for compensation, as CNBC previously reported. "Every new employee of Cognition will be treated the same way as existing employees: with transparency, fairness, and deep respect for their abilities and value," Cognition CEO Scott Wu wrote in a memo to employees on Monday. "After today, our efforts will be as a united and aligned team. There's only one boat and we're all in it together." Windsurf and Cognition didn't immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment. Cognition is best known for its AI coding agent named Devin, which is designed to help engineers build software faster. As of March, the startup had raised hundreds of millions of dollars at a valuation of close to $4 billion, according to a report from Bloomberg. Both companies are backed by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. Other investors in Windsurf include Greenoaks, Kleiner Perkins and General Catalyst. Wu said that the acquisition ensures all Windsurf employees are "treated with respect and well taken care of in this transaction." All employees will participate financially in the deal, have vesting cliffs waived for their work to date and receive fully accelerated vesting for their, according to the memo. "There's never been a more exciting time to build," Wu wrote.

Google hires Windsurf founders, derailing OpenAI's $3 billion acquisition

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. In brief: The founders and top researchers of AI coding startup Windsurf have announced that they will join Google's DeepMind team, effectively ending OpenAI's $3 billion bid to purchase the company. Windsurf will remain independent as Google will not be taking a stake and its new licensing deal with the firm is non-exclusive. Sources told Bloomberg that Google agreed to pay about $2.4 billion to hire Windsurf founders Varun Mohan and Douglas Chen, along with some R&D staff. The Verge reports that the new hires will primarily help develop Google's Gemini AI platform. Windsurf announced that Jeff Wang, its Head of Business who joined the company in 2023, will take over as interim CEO. Global Sales VP Graham Moreno will serve as president. Founded in 2021, Windsurf, formerly known as Codeium, raised over $200 million in venture capital from Greenoaks Capital Partners, AIX Ventures, and other investors. A deal with General Catalyst last year valued the AI coding platform at $1.25 billion; the two companies eventually attempted a $3 billion valuation with Kleiner Perkins. Windsurf agreed to an acquisition by OpenAI at that price earlier this year, but the deal reportedly collapsed over concerns that Microsoft would gain Windsurf's intellectual property. Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI grants it access to the ChatGPT-maker's technology. Buying Windsurf would have helped OpenAI compete with generative AI coding platforms like Microsoft-owned GitHub. The move by Google is the latest example of a tech giant poaching top talent from a startup without acquiring the company outright. Microsoft, Meta, and other firms have recently made similar deals, likely using the tactic to avoid antitrust scrutiny. Also read: The rise of AI coding tools: Is English the hot new programming language? Programming is one of the areas that has seen the most disruption from generative AI. Companies like Windsurf claim that large language models can enable users to write code more quickly than ever using natural language prompts. Industry figures, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and legendary programmer John Carmack, have hailed AI as a fundamental shift in software design. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently admitted that AI now writes around 30% of the company's code, while CTO Kevin Scott boasted that 95% of code will come from AI by 2030. However, critics claim that the technology is prone to error and remains inept at certain tasks. A recent paper from the AI research group METR states that, although developers and experts claim the technology speeds up coding by between 10% and 50%, it actually makes programmers about 19% slower.

Cognition AI Buys Windsurf as A.I. Frenzy Escalates

Cognition AI, an artificial intelligence start-up that offers a software coding assistant, said on Monday that it had bought rival Windsurf as part of an escalating battle to lead in the technology. The move follows a $2.4 billion deal by Google to acquire some of Windsurf's top executives and license the start-up's technology, which was revealed on Friday. Google's deal appeared to leave Windsurf in a difficult position as a stand-alone start-up. OpenAI, the maker of the ChatGPT chatbot, had also been in talks to buy Windsurf before the Google deal. "We've long admired the Windsurf team and what they've built," said Scott Wu, a co-founder of Cognition, in an email to employees viewed by The New York Times. "Within our lifetime, engineers will go from bricklayers to architects, focusing on the creativity of designing systems rather than the manual labor of putting them together." The price of the deal could not immediately be learned. Cognition's move comes amid a flurry of activity by Meta, Google and OpenAI, which are racing against one another to scoop up a small pool of top technology talent in an increasingly competitive space. Unlike the acquisition sprees that big tech companies previously embarked on, the giants are structuring these deals in an unusual way, often positioning them as investments instead of outright purchases. In June, Meta invested $14.3 billion in the start-up Scale AI to hire some of Scale's top executives and access the company's data. Last year, Google invested $3 billion in another start-up, Character AI, in exchange for talent and technology. Amazon made a similar move with Adept, another A.I. company, about a year ago. Some critics have questioned whether the deals have been structured this way to avoid antitrust concerns from regulators, and whether employees who are left behind at the start-ups are being given short shrift. Over the weekend, Windsurf's founders, who said they would leave the company as part of Google's investment, were criticized after it appeared some of their employees would not see similar paydays as colleagues who were leaving to join Google. Cognition, which offers an A.I. coding assistant called Devin to help software developers create programs, said its deal would allow all Windsurf employees to participate in financial gain, according to a letter sent to Windsurf employees. Windsurf employees with equity will receive an "accelerated vesting" schedule, which means their stock can be cashed in earlier than anticipated, according to the letter. Those who do not have stock in the company will also be given vested shares based on their time working at the company. After the Google deal was announced, Windsurf executives worked over the weekend to structure a sale to Cognition, two people familiar with the discussions said. Windsurf had multiple suitors, the people said, but Cognition offered the strongest terms and a deal that would provide bigger benefits to all employees. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement regarding news content related to A.I. systems. OpenAI and Microsoft have denied those claims.)

How Google Killed OpenAI's $3 Billion Deal Without an Acquisition

In the high-stakes battle for AI supremacy, Big Tech has found a new weapon: buying a company’s brainpower without buying the company itself, leaving regulators in the dust. Google just dealt OpenAI a major blow by scuttling a potential $3 billion deal, and in doing so, solidified a rising trend in Silicon Valley’s AI arms race: the "non-acquisition acquisition." Google announced on July 11 that it poached key talent from the rapidly rising AI startup Windsurf, which until then had a reported $3 billion acquisition deal with OpenAI that has now collapsed. Instead, Google is paying $2.4 billion to hire away top Windsurf employees, including the company’s CEO, and take a non-exclusive license to its technology, according to Bloomberg. By poaching Windsurf’s top brains but not acquiring the startup itself, Google achieved two critical goals at once: it nullified OpenAI’s momentum and gained access to the startup’s valuable AI technology. Friday’s announcement is only the latest instance of what is increasingly becoming the go-to tactic for big tech companies looking to grow their competitive edge. Tech analysts have described it as a “non-acquisition acquisition,†or more simply, an “acqui-hire.†OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, ignited the current AI frenzy back in 2022 and has been the leader in generative AI ever since. But its market lead is being increasingly challenged by big tech competitors like Google and Meta, and it is now clearer than ever that elite AI engineers are the most valuable currency in this fight for dominance. Recently, OpenAI has found itself a primary target. After a series of high-profile talent raids by Meta, OpenAI executives described the feeling as though “someone has broken into our home and stolen something,†in an internal memo obtained by WIRED. The biggest aggressor in this new era of “the poaching wars†has been Meta. In April 2025, CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the company had fallen behind competitors in the AI race. His comments sparked a multi-billion-dollar spending spree marked by strategic talent hires. Meta hired ScaleAI CEO Alexandr Wang, Apple’s top AI mind Ruoming Pang, and Nat Friedman, former CEO of Microsoft-owned GitHub, as well as multiple top OpenAI employees tempted by multi-year deals worth millions. The company is gathering this talent under a new group dedicated to developing AI superintelligence called Meta Superintelligence Labs. Similar acqui-hire deals were struck by Microsoft and Amazon last year. Microsoft hired top employees from AI startup Inflection, including co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, who now leads Microsoft’s AI division. Amazon hired co-founders and other top talent from the AI agent startup Adept. This isn’t Google’s first rodeo with acqui-hiring, either. The tech giant inked a similar deal with the startup Character.AI roughly a year ago, which gave Google a non-exclusive license to its LLM technology and saw its two co-founders join the company. Beyond just being a symbol of a new era in the AI arms race, this surge in acqui-hires reveals a new playbook for Big Tech to grow its market dominance while sidestepping antitrust scrutiny. This tactic follows a period of intense regulatory pressure under former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chairwoman Lina Khan, whose administration cracked down on alleged anti-competitive practices in the AI industry. Both Meta and Google are already under intense scrutiny from the FTC. Meta is awaiting a verdict on an antitrust trial over the FTC’s claim that it holds a monopoly over social media. Google, on the other hand, has been dealt numerous antitrust defeats in the past year, accused of having monopolies in both internet search and online advertising. The company is awaiting the final results of a trial that could potentially see it forced to divest from its Chrome browser. Early last year, under Khan’s leadership, the Commission also launched an investigation into Microsoft, Amazon, and Google over their investments in AI startups OpenAI and Anthropic. Under this cloud of regulatory pressure, it seems acqui-hiring is proving to be an easy way for Big Tech to get what it wants. The big names gain all the necessary access to the technology and top research talent of AI startups without having to go through the vetting hurdles of a formal acquisition. Going forward, it is now up to the current FTC, under Trump-appointed chairman Andrew Ferguson, to define its stance on this practice. While not seen as the same kind of hardliner against Big Tech as Khan, Ferguson has largely continued to pursue the previous administration’s investigations, even as President Trump has entertained Silicon Valley leaders at Mar-a-Lago. How Ferguson’s FTC and the Trump administration at large choose to respond, or not, to this new wave of regulatory loopholes will determine the future of American big tech and the AI industry as a whole.

AI Talent Wars Heat Up As Cognition Scoops Up Windsurf After OpenAI Deal Falls Apart

In an unexpected turn of events, artificial intelligence startup Cognition announced this week that it is acquiring AI coding startup Windsurf. The deal comes just days after news broke that OpenAI's planned $3 billion buy of Windsurf had fallen apart. Google then announced the same day that it had hired Varun Mohan, Windsurf's CEO and co-founder, and that it was paying $2.4 billion to license Windsurf's technology and for compensation. A number of other senior staff would reportedly be going to also work for Google. Competition for talent in the AI space is heated, and the news was considered to be a big blow for OpenAI. For its part, Cognition says it is buying Windsurf's intellectual property, product, trademark, brand and "strong business." It did not reveal its purchase price. As part of the deal, the employees who were not hired by Google will be going to work for Cognition. San Francisco-based Cognition has built an AI coding agent called Devin that supposedly helps engineers build software faster. Founded in late 2023, the startup has raised nearly $200 million in funding from investors such as Khosla Ventures, Pear VC, Founders Fund, South Park Commons, and 8VC 1, per Crunchbase data. Also backed by Founders Fund, Windsurf has raised over $240 million since its 2021 inception. Other investors include General Catalyst, Kleiner Perkins and Greenoaks. According to Cognition's announcement, Windsurf has $82 million in annual recurring revenue "with enterprise ARR doubling quarter-over-quarter." Its user base includes over 350 enterprise customers and "hundreds of thousands" of daily active users.

Remaining Windsurf team and tech acquired by Cognition, makers of Devin: 'We're friends with Anthropic again'

Want smarter insights in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get only what matters to enterprise AI, data, and security leaders. Subscribe Now Autonomous AI coding startup Cognition has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Windsurf, the AI developer tools startup best known for its agentic integrated development environment (IDE), the two companies announced on their respective X accounts on Monday. No acquisition amount was disclosed publicly, nor were specific terms of the deal (both are private startups). The acquisition gives Cognition access to Windsurf's core product, brand, and remaining team -- but not its original CEO or co-founders, several of whom have now joined Google in a separate $2.4 billion talent and licensing deal, as The Verge first reported last week. In a joint video posted to X featuring Cognition CEO Scott Wu and interim Windsurf CEO Jeff Wang, the leaders said they would start by integrating Cognition's autonomous AI-powered engineer Devin into Windsurf's IDE. This combined offering is aimed at enabling developers to plan tasks, delegate code generation to AI agents, and review pull requests -- all within a single interface. "This is a perfect fit," said Wang, who was previously Windsurf's head of business. "Working with the best engineering team in the space will be an incredible unlock for our product and our go-to-market team." In a company blog post titled "The Next Chapter," Wang directly acknowledged the internal upheaval: "Last week, we lost our founders and our research team." He praised the remaining staff for their professionalism during the transition and emphasized that despite the disruption, "so much of what makes us great is intact." According to Jeff, Windsurf continues to double enterprise revenue quarter-over-quarter and maintains hundreds of thousands of daily active users. Cognition emphasized that the deal includes full financial participation for Windsurf employees, including waived cliffs and accelerated vesting. Wang also stated in the announcement video: "And of course, we're friends with Anthropic again," an overt reference to Windsurf's prior falling out with the separate AI model provider company that resulted in Anthropic Claude models being pulled from the list of options that developers could rely on to power their Windsurf AI coding agents and processes. But the new chapter follows a chaotic and fragmented few months, marked by aborted acquisition talks, lost model access, and major executive departures. Fragmented exit: Cognition gets the product and users, Google gets the founders On July 11, Google confirmed it had hired Varun Mohan, Windsurf's co-founder and CEO, along with other senior R&D team members. CNBC reported that Google is paying $2.4 billion in compensation and licensing fees as part of the deal, which includes a nonexclusive license to select Windsurf technology. The deal does not include any equity investment in Windsurf, nor a full acquisition of the company. "We're excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf's team to Google DeepMind," said a Google spokesperson in that article. Windsurf, meanwhile, retains the ability to license its technology to others and will continue operating independently under Wang's leadership. The split structure reflects a fragmented resolution to what had earlier been reported as a full-scale acquisition by OpenAI. Bloomberg reported back in May 2025 that OpenAI had entered exclusivity negotiations to buy Windsurf for up to $3 billion. However, those talks fell apart, and OpenAI later told CNBC that the exclusivity period had expired. While the company never formally confirmed the OpenAI acquisition, the fallout was visible -- Windsurf's communications channels went silent, its product experienced instability, and multiple partners reportedly backed away. Friends with Anthropic yet again Among the most damaging blows came from Anthropic, which revoked Windsurf's access to its Claude 3.x model family in early June. In a statement published on its blog, Windsurf confirmed that Anthropic had cut off nearly all first-party API capacity to Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, and related models with less than a week's notice. In response, Windsurf had to reroute traffic through third-party inference providers and restrict access for free-tier users. The company also launched promotional pricing for Gemini Pro as a temporary substitute. Anthropic co-founder Jared Kaplan explained the decision at TechCrunch Sessions: AI 2025, saying the company could not justify supplying its largest competitor, OpenAI, with access to its models via a middle layer. "It would be odd for us to sell Claude to OpenAI," he said, citing both competitive tension and Anthropic's limited compute capacity. Kaplan added that Anthropic prefers to focus on "lasting partnerships" like the one it maintains with Cursor. Windsurf, in its statement, expressed disappointment and emphasized that its platform is about more than just model access. "The magic of Windsurf has never been limited to the model," the company wrote, highlighting UX features, enterprise integrations, and agentic workflows. A new product vision for the combined Windsurf/Cognition/Devin Cognition's agreement now brings long-needed clarity to Windsurf's operational direction. In a video announcing the deal, Scott, CEO of Cognition, described how the two platforms will integrate: "Imagine planning tasks in Windsurf, launching a team of Devins, and reviewing PRs from the comfort of your IDE." Devin, which can autonomously complete software tasks such as fixing bugs and deploying apps, will now be embedded directly into Windsurf's IDE. The companies say this setup will give developers the ability to offload repetitive work to multiple agents in parallel, while still keeping control over key architectural decisions. Cognition views this as the next step in building collaborative human-agent systems, and says Windsurf's IDE provides the missing interface layer to make agentic workflows practical at scale. Both companies expressed confidence that users will benefit from a more fluid, tightly integrated development experience. The Windsurf blog post also expanded on product-level plans, confirming that Windsurf's existing features like Tab and Cascade -- used for manual high-leverage coding -- will remain integrated in the IDE. Developers will be able to assign work to "a team of Devins" while still jumping in to complete or edit complex parts themselves. "It seamlessly gets stitched back together all within the same environment," Wang wrote. Consolidation amid competition The combined Cognition-Windsurf entity now competes directly with GitHub Copilot, Replit, Cursor, and other AI-native IDE players. Google's Gemini platform and Microsoft's Visual Studio Code with "agent mode" are also expanding rapidly into this space. Devin made headlines earlier this year for its ability to autonomously solve GitHub issues and complete end-to-end coding tasks. Merging that capability with Windsurf's customizable environment -- including features like Previews, Reviews, and Enterprise workflows -- may create a product with fewer silos and more automation than rivals. Still, the ongoing talent war means competitive advantage is short-lived. Google's ability to hire Windsurf's founding team -- including Varun Mohan and co-founder Douglas Chen -- signals that even partial exits now come with multibillion-dollar price tags. Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft have made similar moves, absorbing key figures from startups like Scale AI, Adept, and Inflection. Despite the leadership shake-up, Windsurf is continuing operations under Wang's leadership. "Most of Windsurf's world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise," he said in a statement. Wang also emphasized that the team chose Cognition over other viable options, citing not only technical alignment but admiration: "They were the only team we were scared of." He noted that Cognition's revenue is growing even faster than Windsurf's and that its $300 million in funding and $4 billion valuation reflect strong financial footing. The company is expected to focus on enterprise readiness, agentic IDE capabilities, and hybrid/federated deployments -- core features that have helped it stand out among a crowded field. For developers, the path forward now includes both continuity and change: a product that stays alive within Cognition, a founding team now at DeepMind, and a landscape that is quickly consolidating around model access and engineering talent.

Google taps Windsurf CEO and co-founder to join DeepMind

Google's licensing deal with the start-up comes after a possible acquisition by OpenAI fell through. Google has reportedly paid a hefty sum to license Windsurf's tech and hire the start-up's top dogs. In a statement last week, Windsurf announced an agreement between the two companies which would see the start-up's co-founder Douglas Chen and CEO Varun Mohan moving to Google DeepMind. And along with the higher-ups, Google has also poached some of Windsurf's R&D team. According to the Wall Street Journal, the deal is valued at roughly $2.4bn. As per the deal, the Big Tech giant will also have non-exclusive rights to use Windsurf's artificial intelligence coding tech, meaning, the start-up is open to continue business as is and license its tech to other enterprises. Google's licensing and hiring deal with Windsurf comes after a possible OpenAI acquisition of the start-up fell through. "We're excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf's team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding," Google told news outlets. "We are excited to be joining Google DeepMind along with some of the Windsurf team," the outgoing co-founder and CEO told Tech Crunch. "We are proud of what Windsurf has built over the last four years and are excited to see it move forward with their world class team and kick-start the next phase." In the interim, Windsurf's head of business Jeff Wang will be stepping in as CEO while Graham Moreno, the start-up's vice president of Global Sales, will take over as the company president. This is the latest in the ongoing mass talent hunt for AI in Big Tech. Last week, Meta managed to hire Apple's AI lead Ruoming Pang in a blow to the iPhone-maker. This came just after the company hired Daniel Gross, the CEO and co-founder of Safe Superintelligence to its Meta Superintelligence Lab, and invested more than $14bn in Scale AI, hiring the start-up's CEO Alexandr Wang to the newly founded AI team. On the other hand, Microsoft managed to poach Meta's former engineering chief Jay Parikh to lead its AI group. While in 2024, the company hired Google DeepMind's co-founder Mustafa Suleyman to lead Microsoft AI. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

AI coding assistant startup Cognition acquires rival Windsurf - SiliconANGLE

AI coding assistant startup Cognition acquires rival Windsurf Cognition AI Inc., a well-funded startup with an artificial intelligence coding assistant, today announced plans to buy rival Windsurf. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The sale caps off an eventful few months for Windsurf. The startup, which is incorporated as Exafunction Inc., reportedly received a $3 billion takeover bid from OpenAI in April. Last week, it declined the offer and instead signed a $2.3 billion technology licensing deal with Google LLC. The deal saw Windsurf founders Varun Mohan and Douglas Chen join the search giant along with several researchers. Most of the company's 250 staffers have reportedly remained in their roles. Jeff Wang, Windsurf's head of business prior to the deal with Google, is now interim Chief Executive Officer. Windsurf's flagship product is an eponymous code editor with a built-in AI assistant. The assistant can explain how a piece of code works, generate new code and scan it for bugs. The editor also offers other features, including a tool that allows developers to quickly preview the interface of a newly created website. San Francisco-based Cognition competes in the same market. Its flagship Devin coding assistant can automate many of the same tasks as Windsurf, as well as provide a step-by-step overview of how it completes those tasks. Developers can manually optimize those steps to enhance the AI's output. Cognition sells an enterprise version of Devin that includes several additional features. It provides the ability to fine-tune the assistant's AI models using proprietary datasets, which boosts output quality. Customers can optionally deploy their customized versions of Devin on their own infrastructure. The acquisition of Windurf comes four months after Cognition reportedly raised "hundreds of millions of dollars" in funding. According to Bloomberg, the investment doubled its valuation to $4 billion. In a blog post, Cognition co-founder and CEO Scott Wu disclosed that Windsurf has hundreds of thousands of daily active users. That installed base base is generating $82 million in annualized sales. Windsurf's revenue from enterprise customers, in turn, is doubling quarter-over-quarter. "In the immediate term, the Windsurf team will continue to operate as they have been, and we will remain focused on our work of accelerating your engineering with Devin," Wu wrote. "Over the coming months, we'll be investing heavily in integrating Windsurf's capabilities and unique IP into Cognition's products." Windsurf relies on Anthropic PBC's Claude series of large language models to power some of its features. After word of OpenAI's takeover effort emerged in April, Anthropic cut access to its LLMs. Wu wrote today that Windsurf will have "full access to the latest Claude models" following its acquisition by Cognition.

OpenAI Can't Windsurf Anymore as Microsoft Helps Google Steal the CEO | AIM

The agreement is valued at around $2.4 billion and involves a non-exclusive license, allowing Windsurf to remain independent. Nothing seems to be going well for OpenAI. After losing key researchers to Meta and delaying its open-source model, the Windsurf deal has also collapsed. This time, it's Google that has spoiled OpenAI's plans. Instead of acquiring Windsurf outright, the search giant struck a deal to license Windsurf's technology and hire key personnel, including CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and select R&D staff. The agreement is valued at around $2.4 billion and involves a non-exclusive license, allowing Windsurf to remain independent. Effective immediately, Jeff Wang, head of business at Windsurf, has stepped into the role of interim CEO. Graham Moreno, previously VP of global sales, has taken on the role of president. Wang said in a post on X that Windsurf will now concentrate more directly on enterprise customers, distancing itself from broader developer-focused tools in a market that has seen increasing competition. "There are now many varied solutions available outside of Windsurf for software development," Wang said. "We see an advantage to double down on our focus on the enterprise problems, which has long been our primary focus." In May, OpenAI entered exclusive talks to acquire AI coding startup Windsurf for roughly $3 billion, an effort to strengthen its developer tools amid growing competition. The deal, however, faced friction from Microsoft. Microsoft, as OpenAI's largest backer, holds rights to any intellectual property OpenAI acquires under their agreement. But OpenAI was unwilling to grant Microsoft access to Windsurf's IP. This became a key sticking point. By early July, the exclusivity window expired without an extension, and OpenAI failed to close the deal, allowing Windsurf to explore other offers. By doing so, Microsoft maintains its competitive stance by preventing OpenAI from handing over IP that could rival GitHub Copilot. Microsoft also went shopping around and it recently partnered with Replit to bring its agentic software development platform to enterprise customers via Azure. The collaboration allows business users across departments to build and deploy secure, production-ready applications using natural language, without writing any code. Microsoft recently made Visual Studio Code an open-source AI editor by open-sourcing the GitHub Copilot Chat extension under the MIT license. All of this is while OpenAI and Microsoft are already going through a rough patch in their relationship, partly due to the AGI clause. All in all, it seems like Microsoft has indirectly helped Google steal Windsurf away from OpenAI. Google has recently shown strong interest in agent-based IDEs. The company launched its coding agent, Jules, which was officially announced last December. Jules can fix bugs, build new features, and run and validate changes through unit tests. Jules also integrates with GitHub to understand the codebase and operates asynchronously. The agent is powered by Google's latest Gemini 2.5 Pro model. Furthermore, Google recently released Gemini CLI, an open-source AI agent that integrates its Gemini 2.5 Pro model inside a user's terminal. This allows users to execute commands and write code using natural, conversational prompts. By securing Windsurf's technology and hiring its key talent, Google has added strength to Gemini. For OpenAI, missing out on the deal puts it on the back foot in its battle with Microsoft, Anthropic, and others in the developer tools market. It seems like Microsoft and Google both are trying to take Cursor, one of the most popular AI coding tools, head on. To be sure, OpenAI is one of the first backers of Cursor, back when it was operating as Anysphere. All of this is while there is a growing amount of distrust building in the developer community against the pricing strategy of Cursor. For Windsurf, this marks another bumpy chapter, this time without its founder Mohan, who had long held the sail steady through shifting winds. The company has pivoted multiple times in the past, and Mohan has openly stated before that Windsurf has no single moat, but should instead have multiple ones. "In any startup, you have to keep proving yourself," he said. "All insights depreciate. Technology evolves, and whatever edge you had can fade quickly." He explained that what gives companies staying power isn't a one-time insight but a compounding tech advantage. "If a company wins, it's not because they had a tech insight a year ago. It's because they've kept innovating and building on that insight." Windsurf was indeed headed on a winning streak all this while. According to a report from Sacra, Windsurf reached $40M in ARR in February 2025, tripling from $12M at the end of 2024. The company has expanded from 10,000 users in early 2023 to over 800,000 active developers by early 2025. As Wang from the team puts it, "Windsurf's mission has always been to enable our customers to dream bigger to create whatever they want, bigger, better, and faster than ever before." All of this has put it in the spotlight in a competition against all of the AI coding tools in less than a year. OpenAI started taking interest so much that it started another tussle with Microsoft for the startup. And now, Google has roped them in. For Windsurf, their goal of reaching millions of developers is going strong, regardless of which company backs them up.

Devin Creator Cognition Acquires Windsurf After Google Poaches Its Founders | AIM

Cognition, a San Francisco-based AI company, has finalised an agreement to acquire Windsurf, including its IP, product, trademark, and full workforce. "This transaction is structured so that 100% of Windsurf employees will participate financially," Cognition said in a statement. "They will also have all vesting cliffs waived and will receive fully accelerated vesting for their work to date." This development follows Google DeepMind's hiring of Windsurf's CEO Varun Mohan, co‑founder Douglas Chen, and key R&D personnel under a $2.4 billion licensing agreement. Cognition Labs is an applied AI lab founded in November 2023 by Olympiad gold‑medalist programmers Scott Wu, Steven Hao, and Walden Yan. Its flagship product is Devin, marketed as the first autonomous AI software engineer that can plan, write, debug, and deploy code within IDE environments. Cognition said the combination of its AI agent Devin with Windsurf's IDE platform will support developers in planning, delegating, and executing code tasks within a single interface. "Working side by side, we'll soon enable you to plan tasks in an IDE powered by Devin's codebase understanding, delegate chunks of work to multiple Devins in parallel, complete the highest-leverage parts yourself with the help of autocomplete, and stitch it all back together in the same IDE," the company said. Windsurf's team, along with its platform, is expected to integrate with Cognition's broader efforts to reshape software development through AI-native tools. "We're privileged to welcome their world-class people to our team," Cognition said. "There's never been a better time to build." While Cognition acquires Windsurf as a standalone business, Google has secured a non‑exclusive license to Windsurf's technology and onboarded Mohan, Chen, and select R&D staff into its DeepMind division, primarily to bolster its Gemini AI coding project.

Cognition acquires Windsurf after Google licensing deal

Cognition plans to integrate Windsurf's capabilities into its own products. Artificial intelligence start-up Cognition is acquiring Windsurf - just days after Google paid a hefty sum to license Windsurf's tech and hire its top dogs. While Cognition did not disclose the value of the acquisition, co-founder and CEO Scott Wu said that the company will be purchasing Windsurf's talent, products, intellectual property and its clientele of more than 350 enterprises. Founded in 2023, Cognition's flagship product is an AI coding agent, named "Devin", designed to speed up software development. Earlier this March, Bloomberg reported that the start-up hit a near $4bn valuation. While Windsurf is an AI coding assistant, which raised a Series C funding round last year at a valuation of $1.25bn. Both start-ups are backed by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. While Windsurf is also backed by General Catalyst and Kleiner Perkins and Cognition's investors include Khosla Ventures, Pear VC and 8VC. The acquisition will see Cognition "investing heavily" in integrating Windsurf's capabilities into its own products, Wu said. According to him, the acquisition doubles down on the start-up's aim to building the "future of software". Last week, Google reportedly paid $2.4bn buy non-exclusive rights to license Windsurf's AI coding tech. The firm also poached the start-up's co-founder Douglas Chen and CEO Varun Mohan, as well as some of its R&D team, hiring them to join Google DeepMind. In the interim, Windsurf announced its head of business Jeff Wang to take over as CEO while Graham Moreno, the start-up's vice-president of global sales, is set to become president. Windsurf was initially expected to be snapped up by OpenAI in a $3bn deal earlier this year. However, that fell through. The AI frenzy is escalating, with firms making several large acquisitions and poaching upper-level talent to advance their position as a leader in the tech. Earlier this year, Salesforce acquired Informatica, OpenAI bought Io to create AI-powered hardware and Capgemini purchased WNS for $3.3bn - just to name a few. While in a mass talent hunt, Meta managed to hire Apple's AI models lead Ruoming Pang after tapping Daniel Gross, the CEO and co-founder of Safe Superintelligence and invested more than $14bn in Scale AI, hiring the start-up's CEO Alexandr Wang. Microsoft managed to poach Meta's former engineering chief Jay Parikh to lead its AI group. While in 2024, the company hired Google DeepMind's co-founder Mustafa Suleyman to lead Microsoft AI. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Google just blocked OpenAI's $3B AI deal

Google recently thwarted OpenAI's potential $3 billion acquisition of AI startup Windsurf by instead hiring key personnel and licensing its technology, a tactic observers term a "non-acquisition acquisition" or "acqui-hire." This occurred on July 11, with Google reportedly paying $2.4 billion to secure top Windsurf employees, including its CEO, and obtain a non-exclusive license for its technology, according to Bloomberg. This strategy allowed Google to neutralize OpenAI's momentum and gain access to Windsurf's AI technology without a full company acquisition. The maneuver represents a growing trend among major technology companies seeking to enhance competitive advantage in the artificial intelligence sector. OpenAI, responsible for ChatGPT, initiated the current AI development surge in 2022 and has maintained a leading position in generative AI. However, its market standing faces increasing challenges from competitors such as Google and Meta. The demand for elite AI engineers has become a critical factor in this competitive landscape. OpenAI has recently become a primary target for talent acquisition. Following a series of notable raids by Meta, OpenAI executives conveyed feeling as though "someone has broken into our home and stolen something," as detailed in an internal memo obtained by WIRED. Meta has been particularly active in this new phase of talent acquisition, often referred to as "poaching wars." In April 2025, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the company had fallen behind in the AI competition. This admission led to a multi-billion-dollar investment in strategic talent recruitment. Meta subsequently hired Alexandr Wang, CEO of ScaleAI; Ruoming Pang, Apple's senior AI specialist; and Nat Friedman, former CEO of Microsoft-owned GitHub. The company also recruited multiple high-ranking OpenAI employees through multi-year agreements valued at millions of dollars. This newly assembled talent is being integrated into Meta Superintelligence Labs, a new division focused on developing AI superintelligence. Microsoft and Amazon executed similar acqui-hire transactions in the preceding year. Microsoft recruited top personnel from AI startup Inflection, including co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, who now heads Microsoft's AI division. Amazon secured co-founders and other senior talent from the AI agent startup Adept. Google has also previously engaged in similar practices, having executed an acqui-hire deal approximately a year prior with Character.AI. This agreement granted Google a non-exclusive license to Character.AI's large language model (LLM) technology, and the startup's two co-founders joined Google. The rise of acqui-hires indicates a revised strategy for large technology firms to expand market dominance while circumventing antitrust scrutiny. This approach has emerged during a period of heightened regulatory pressure, particularly under former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairwoman Lina Khan, whose administration focused on alleged anti-competitive practices within the AI industry. Both Meta and Google are currently under intense examination by the FTC. Meta awaits a verdict in an antitrust trial concerning the FTC's claim that it maintains a monopoly in social media. Google has faced numerous antitrust setbacks in the past year, accused of monopolistic practices in internet search and online advertising. The company is awaiting the final results of a trial that could potentially mandate the divestiture of its Chrome browser. Early last year, under Khan's leadership, the FTC initiated an investigation into Microsoft, Amazon, and Google regarding their investments in AI startups OpenAI and Anthropic. Amidst this regulatory environment, acqui-hiring has presented a method for major technology companies to acquire technology and research talent from AI startups without undergoing the formal acquisition review processes. The current FTC, led by Trump-appointed Chairman Andrew Ferguson, now faces the responsibility of defining its position on this practice. While Ferguson is not perceived as having the same hardline stance against Big Tech as Khan, he has largely continued the previous administration's investigations, even as President Trump has engaged with Silicon Valley leaders.

Google hires AI leaders from a start-up that OpenAI was courting

Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Google has joined Silicon Valley's scramble to scoop up artificial intelligence engineers, hiring the leaders of Windsurf, a startup that developed an AI-powered computer programming tool, in a $2.4 billion deal. The move, which became public Friday, was the latest example of how tech companies are waging battles to suck up AI talent. The deal deepens Google's bench of AI engineers while also scoring it a point against OpenAI, one of its biggest challengers in the field.

Google hires AI leaders from a startup that OpenAI was courting

Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Google has joined Silicon Valley's scramble to scoop up artificial intelligence engineers, hiring the leaders of Windsurf, a startup that developed an AI-powered computer programming tool, in a $2.4 billion deal. The move, which became public Friday, was the latest example of how tech companies are waging battles to suck up AI talent. The deal deepens Google's bench of AI engineers while also scoring it a point against OpenAI, one of its biggest challengers in the field.

Google Poaches Windsurf's Founder as Top AI Talent Chooses a Big Paycheck Over Building Their Own Company

The tech giants have been competing fiercely over who gets the best AI talent, and employing some unconventional tactics to ensure they attract the right experts under their control. In a surprise announcement on Friday night, Google revealed a $2.4 billion deal for Mountain View, CA-based Windsurf AI, which calls itself "the first AI coding assistant built for professional software engineers & large codebases," and said it was hiring several of Windsurf AI's key engineers to work on its own AI effort. There's was startling detail in this news, apart from the giant dollar sum; competitor OpenAI had also been negotiating for months to acquire Windsurf, Reuters reported. In a statement, Google said it was "excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf's team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding." Reuters says this talent includes CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and members of Windsurf's research and development team. How Google outbid and outlast OpenAI How could Google pull off this trick? It could have something to do with the fact that the OpenAI deal valued the four-year-old startup at around $3 billion. However, a person familiar with the deal told Reuters that Google's investment in Windsurf was a $2.4 licensing agreement that allows the search engine giant to use some of Windsurf's technology under non-exclusive terms. Amazingly, Google won't take a stake or a controlling interest in the startup. This leaves Windsurf mostly intact, operating under its own control, and on the receiving end of a massive pay day from a deal that also allows it to sell its software to other companies, all of which will please its investment backers.

72 Hours After Google Poached Its Founder, Windsurf Is Now Being Acquired by Cognition

Vibe-coding platform Windsurf has endured some choppy waters over the past week, but has sailed into what appears to be a safe harbor. Cognition, the AI software engineering startup, has announced a deal to buy Windsurf. The deal comes just days after Google poached the company's founder and top talent for $2.4 billion. The new deal has been structured to ensure all Windsurf employees are taken care of. Back in May 2025, OpenAI announced plans to buy Windsurf for $3 billion, but according to the Verge, talks between the companies fizzled out as a result of OpenAI's longstanding deal with Microsoft. The deal includes terms that require OpenAI to share its tech, potentially including Windsurf, with Microsoft. After negotiations broke down, Google swooped in with a $2.4 billion offer to license Windsurf's technology and hire away the company's founder, Varun Mohan, along with some of the company's top-level staff. This deal worked out well for Windsurf's investors, who will be paid out with Google's money, but many new employees without vested equity won't receive any kind of payout. "My read is that the Windsurf leadership team was desperate to find a way out and facing competition from the labs [like OpenAI and Anthropic] and Cursor structured a deal to benefit themselves," wrote Jordi Hays, cohost of popular tech news show TBPN, on X. On Monday, Cognition founder Scott Wu posted on X that his company would be acquiring Windsurf. In a note that was first sent to employees, Wu wrote that Cognition will fully own the Windsurf platform and IP, along with their business. Wu said that Windsurf is currently making $82 million in annual recurring revenue with over 350 enterprise customers. But most importantly, Wu wrote, Cognition is bringing in all of Windsurf's remaining employees, including "some of the most impressive people in our industry, including world-class GTM, engineering, and product teams." Wu went on to say that he and acting Windsurf CEO Jeff Wang, who only assumed the job on Friday, structured their transaction "to ensure that every single employee is treated with respect and well taken care of." As a result, he wrote, 100 percent of Windsurf employees will participate financially in the deal, will have vesting cliffs cleared for their work to date, and will receive fully accelerated vesting for their work to date. In a video, Wu and Wang explained how Cognition and Windsurf's tech will complement one another, envisioning a world where Windsurf can be used to direct multiple Devins, Cognition's software engineering assistant, to attack an engineering problem in tandem. Plus, Wang said in the video, "we're friends with Anthropic again." Anthropic had previously blocked Windsurf from using their popular Claude AI models when the company was being acquired by rival OpenAI, but since OpenAI is no longer buying Windsurf, Anthropic has re-opened the company's Claude access. On X, Wang wrote that "the last 72 hours have been the wildest rollercoaster ride of my career," but that he is now "overwhelmed with excitement and optimism, but most of all, gratitude. Trying times reveal character, and I couldn't be prouder of how every single person at Windsurf showed up these last three days for each other and for our users." Details regarding how much Cognition is paying to acquire Windsurf were not disclosed. The final deadline for the 2025 Inc. Power Partner Awards is Friday, July 25, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

Google Swoops in to Make a $2.4 Billion Deal With a Startup Previously Promised to OpenAI

OpenAI's $3 billion deal to acquire the AI coding startup Windsurf fell apart -- so Windsurf turned to OpenAI competitor Google instead. Bloomberg reported last week that after Windsurf's deal with OpenAI crumbled, Google stepped in and struck a deal with the AI coding startup to pay around $2.4 billion for talent and licensing rights. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but is rather paying to hire the startup's CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and a small group of other senior Windsurf staffers to work on Google's DeepMind AI team. Most of Windsurf's 250 employees will stay with the startup and focus on creating innovations for its business clients. "We're excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf's team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding," Google said in a statement, per Reuters. Related: How a Love of Chess Led the CEO of Google's DeepMind to a Career in AI -- and a Nobel Prize Google will also have a nonexclusive license to use Windsurf's technology, meaning that Windsurf can license its platform to other companies. Windsurf's deal with Google arrives months after the AI coding startup was reported to be in talks with Google rival OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition. Bloomberg reported that the deal collapsed because Windsurf wanted to prohibit major OpenAI investor Microsoft from accessing its intellectual property. Windsurf and OpenAI had entered into an exclusivity period for the acquisition offer, which ended as of Friday, OpenAI told Bloomberg. Windsurf is now able to consider other bids. Windsurf, previously known as Codeium, offers AI coding tools like Cascade, an AI agent that codes, corrects, and thinks multiple steps ahead. According to PitchBook data, the startup was founded in 2021 and is based in Mountain View, California. Windsurf announced in April 2024 that it had over 500,000 active users and over 500 paying enterprise clients. OpenAI, meanwhile, was founded in 2015 and came out with ChatGPT in November 2022. The startup closed a $40 billion fundraising round in March at a $300 billion valuation, the biggest tech funding round on record from a private company. ChatGPT now has 500 million global weekly users, OpenAI disclosed in March. Related: Saying 'Please' and 'Thank You' to ChatGPT Costs OpenAI 'Tens of Millions of Dollars' Google's decision to hire new AI talent arrives as Meta poaches former staff members for its superintelligence team. Former Google DeepMind researchers Jack Rae and Pei Sun joined Meta last month to help the company work towards superintelligence, or AI that surpasses human capabilities. Meta isn't just poaching from Google. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, 40, stated last month that Meta was trying to poach OpenAI staff with "giant" $100 million signing bonuses and "more than that" in compensation per year, a statement that Meta executives later refuted.

Google Hires Top Talent From Windsurf in Silicon Valley's Latest 'Acqui-Hire' Deal

Google signs a $2.4 billion deal with Windsurf, bringing its coding team to DeepMind without full acquisition. Silicon Valley is on an acquisition spree -- though not in the traditional sense. Instead of outright purchases, major A.I. companies are striking "acqui-hire" deals, poaching top talent from promising startups. The latest example comes from Google, which is bringing on several executives from the A.I. software firm Windsurf in a new multibillion-dollar deal. Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter Sign Up Thank you for signing up! By clicking submit, you agree to our <a href="http://observermedia.com/terms">terms of service</a> and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime. See all of our newsletters Among those joining Google's DeepMind division are Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan and co-founder Douglas Chen. The pair, along with other members of their team, will focus on building agentic coding tools. "We are proud of what Windsurf has built over the last four years and are excited to see it move forward with their world class team and kick-start the next phase," said Mohan and Chen in a statement. Founded in 2021, Windsurf specializes in developing A.I. assistants to help developers write code. The company has raised $243 million to date, according to Crunchbase. In the wake of the leadership transition, Jeff Wang, Windsurf's current head of business, will step up as interim CEO effective immediately. Initially, it seemed OpenAI would be the one to acquire Windsurf. The ChatGPT maker was hoping to buy out the startup for $3 billion. However, those plans reportedly fell through due to OpenAI's close partnership with Microsoft. Concerned about giving Microsoft access to Windsurf's intellectual property, OpenAI ultimately walked away from the acquisition. Google isn't just hiring Windsurf's staffers; it has also struck a non-exclusive licensing agreement to use some of Windsurf's technology. The deal, which is valued at $2.4 billion, does not involve Google taking an equity stake in Windsurf, according to the Wall Street Journal. "We're excited to welcome some top A.I. coding talent from Windsurf's team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding," said Google in a statement, adding that it is currently focused on enhancing advanced the developer capabilities of Gemini. A surge in A.I. acqui-hires This isn't the first time Google has pursed an acqui-hire to bring top A.I. talent on board. Last year, the company paid $2.7 billion in a similar deal with Character.AI, licensing the chatbot maker's technology and hiring its co-founders, Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas. These types of hiring deals have become increasingly common as major tech firms seek to expand their A.I. teams while sidestepping the regulatory scrutiny that often accompanies traditional acquisitions or mergers. Still, the recent wave of acqui-hires -- including Microsoft's $650 million licensing and hiring deal with Inflection AI and a similar partnership between Amazon and Adept -- have drawn attention from antitrust authorities. In one of the largest acqui-hires to date, Meta last month recruited Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang, along with members of his team, to join a newly formed A.I. group. The move followed Meta's investment of more than $14 billion in Scale AI, through which it secured a non-voting stake in the startup.

Who is Varun Mohan, the Windsurf CEO Google beat ChatGPT-maker OpenAI to hire? - The Economic Times

OpenAI was in advanced talks to acquire Windsurf, cofounded by Mohan, one of the fastest-growing startups in software development workflows, as recently as June, according to reports. Instead, Google has secured a non-exclusive license to certain Windsurf technologies but will not take a stake in the company, sources told Reuters.Google said on Friday it has hired key team members from AI code generation startup Windsurf, blocking a reported acquisition attempt by rival OpenAI. As part of the move, the search giant has brought on board Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan and cofounder Douglas Chen. OpenAI was in advanced talks to acquire Windsurf, one of the fastest-growing startups in software development workflows, as recently as June, according to reports. Instead, Google has secured a non-exclusive license to certain Windsurf technologies but will not take a stake in the company, sources told Reuters. But who is Varun Mohan? Mohan, who has Indian roots, grew up in Sunnyvale, California, to parents who emigrated from India. He attended The Harker School in San Jose before pursuing a BS and MEng in Computer Science at MIT, where he focused on systems and deep learning research. He began his career working on GPU virtualisation tools and held stints at companies including Nuro, Databricks, Quora, and LinkedIn before cofounding Windsurf (originally known as Codeium) in 2021. Under Mohan's leadership, Windsurf quickly gained traction with over a million developers globally. The startup offers a standalone AI-powered integrated development environment (IDE) designed to help engineers move beyond repetitive coding tasks and focus on higher-level problem-solving. Its flagship feature, the "Cascade" agent, automates everything from writing and refactoring code to running commands and generating new features across large codebases. Unlike most AI coding tools that work as plugins, Windsurf functions as a full IDE, offering greater control and lower latency. The company has emerged as a strong rival to GitHub Copilot and newer players like Cursor by providing granular model customization and making AI coding assistants accessible even to non-technical teams. Mohan's broader vision is to push engineers towards more strategic design thinking and away from line-by-line implementation.

Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan and team amid AI talent war; skips $3billion OpenAI deal

On Friday, Google announced it hired Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of AI coding startup Windsurf. This move is part of a big battle between tech companies trying to grab the best AI talent. Google is not buying Windsurf or investing in it. Instead, it will license some of its technology, but non-exclusively, meaning Windsurf can still share it with others, according to the report by CNBC. Google is also hiring some senior research and development staff from Windsurf, not just the CEO. A Google spokesperson said the company is excited to add talent from Windsurf to Google DeepMind to help with agentic coding, which helps software developers using Gemini tools, as per the reports. Windsurf was earlier in talks with OpenAI about a possible $3 billion acquisition, but the deal didn't happen.OpenAI didn't comment when asked about this new deal with Google. This deal increases the intense competition in AI hiring between big tech firms, as mentioned in the report by CNBC. ALSO READ: Verizon faces backlash over plan to delay phone unlocking beyond 60 days Recently, Meta, Facebook's parent company, gave big job offers to some OpenAI staff and even hired Alexandr Wang, founder of Scale AI, to lead their AI strategy. Meta invested $14.3 billion into his startup. Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, is also joining Google as part of this deal, as per the reports. Jeff Wang, who was head of business at Windsurf for 2 years, is now the interim CEO.He said that most of Windsurf's team will stay at the company and continue building their product to help businesses, as per the reports. Windsurf got popular in 2024 for its work in "vibe coding", which is about using new AI tools to write code easily.This trend is being used by both developers and beginners, which helped increase Windsurf's revenue, according to the report by CNBC. Other companies like Cursor, another coding AI startup, are also gaining popularity. OpenAI also considered buying Cursor. Because of all this interest, investors are now giving higher valuations to such AI startups. Google has done similar hiring moves before, like last year with Character.AI, as per the reports. ALSO READ: Iowa weather alert: Tornado warnings, flash floods & severe storms hit multiple counties Other tech giants are doing the same, Amazon hired AI people via its Adept deal, and Microsoft did it through its Inflection deal. Microsoft is now offering "agent mode" in Visual Studio Code to support vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said 30% of Microsoft's code is now written by AI. The Google-Windsurf deal was first reported by The Verge earlier on Friday, as per the report by CNBC. Q1. Did Google buy Windsurf? No, Google only hired Windsurf's CEO and some staff and licensed some of its technology. Q2. Why is Windsurf in the news with Google and OpenAI? Windsurf was in talks for a $3B deal with OpenAI but instead made a talent and tech deal with Google.

Cognition AI buys Windsurf as AI frenzy escalates

Cognition AI has acquired rival startup Windsurf following Google's $2.4 billion deal to license Windsurf's tech and hire top executives. The acquisition ensures financial benefits for all Windsurf employees. This move highlights fierce competition among tech giants like Meta, Google, and OpenAI to secure top AI talent and innovation. Cognition AI, an artificial intelligence startup that offers a software coding assistant, said Monday that it had bought rival Windsurf as part of an escalating battle to lead in the technology. The move follows a $2.4 billion deal by Google to acquire some of Windsurf's top executives and license the startup's technology, which was revealed Friday. Google's deal appeared to leave Windsurf in a difficult position as a stand-alone startup. OpenAI, the maker of the ChatGPT chatbot, had also been in talks to buy Windsurf before the Google deal. "We've long admired the Windsurf team and what they've built," Scott Wu, a co-founder of Cognition, said in an email to employees viewed by The New York Times. "Within our lifetime, engineers will go from bricklayers to architects, focusing on the creativity of designing systems rather than the manual labor of putting them together." The price of the deal could not immediately be learned. Cognition's move comes amid a flurry of activity by Meta, Google and OpenAI, which are racing against one another to scoop up a small pool of top technology talent in an increasingly competitive space. Unlike the acquisition sprees that big tech companies previously embarked on, the giants are structuring these deals in an unusual way, often positioning them as investments instead of outright purchases. In June, Meta invested $14.3 billion in the startup Scale AI to hire some of Scale's top executives and to expand a commercial agreement. Last year, Google invested $3 billion in another startup, Character AI, in exchange for talent and technology. Amazon made a similar move with Adept, another AI company, about a year ago. Some critics have questioned whether the deals have been structured this way to avoid antitrust concerns from regulators and whether employees who are left behind at the startups are being given short shrift. Over the weekend, Windsurf's founders, who said they would leave the company as part of Google's investment, were criticized after it appeared that some of their employees would not see similar paydays as colleagues who were leaving to join Google. Cognition, which offers an AI coding assistant called Devin to help software developers create programs, said its deal would allow all Windsurf employees to participate in financial gain, according to a letter sent to Windsurf employees. Windsurf employees with equity will receive an "accelerated vesting" schedule, which means their stock can be cashed in earlier than anticipated, according to the letter. Those who do not have stock in the company will also be given vested shares based on their time working at the company. After the Google deal was announced, Windsurf executives worked over the weekend to structure a sale to Cognition, two people familiar with the discussions said. Windsurf had multiple suitors, the people said, but Cognition offered the strongest terms and a deal that would provide bigger benefits to all employees.

The Windsurf Story So Far, Windsurf's Wild Ride : OpenAI, Google and Acquisition By Cognition

What happens when a $3 billion deal collapses in just 72 hours? For Windsurf, the AI coding assistant once hailed as a rising star in developer tools, the answer is a whirlwind of chaos, controversy, and reinvention. In a matter of days, the company went from being courted by OpenAI to witnessing a controversial reverse acqui-hire by Google, only to ultimately land in the hands of Cognition Labs. The implosion of Windsurf's high-stakes acquisition deal reveals not just the fragility of Silicon Valley's startup ecosystem but also the growing tension between AI model creators and tool developers. In an industry where innovation moves faster than trust can be built, Windsurf's saga is a cautionary tale of ambition colliding with reality. Nate B Jones explains the dramatic rise and fall of Windsurf, offering a rare glimpse into the high-stakes world of AI development. You'll discover how a company that once boasted $100 million in annual recurring revenue and a user base of over 1 million developers was brought to its knees by intellectual property disputes, competitive pressures, and shifting industry priorities. But this isn't just a story of failure -- it's also one of reinvention. From Google's controversial talent grab to Cognition Labs' inclusive acquisition strategy, the Windsurf saga offers critical insights into the future of AI coding tools, the battle for top engineering talent, and the evolving power dynamics within the AI ecosystem. What does this mean for the future of AI-driven development? The answer lies in the lessons Windsurf's journey has to offer. Windsurf's journey began in 2021 under its original name, Exofunction, founded by MIT graduates Varun Mohan and Douglas Chen. Initially, the company focused on creating GPU optimization tools. However, recognizing the growing demand for AI-driven solutions, the company pivoted in 2024 to focus on AI coding assistance, rebranding itself as Windsurf and launching an AI-native development environment. This strategic shift positioned Windsurf as a direct competitor to Cursor, offering developers a more affordable premium tier and a streamlined coding experience. By 2025, Windsurf had achieved several significant milestones that solidified its position in the market: These achievements reflected Windsurf's ability to adapt to the evolving needs of developers and enterprises, cementing its reputation as a leader in AI coding tools. In April 2025, OpenAI announced its intention to acquire Windsurf for $3 billion, aiming to integrate the IDE into its ChatGPT developer suite. However, the deal fell apart due to complications surrounding Microsoft's intellectual property (IP) rights, which stemmed from a 2023 agreement between Microsoft and OpenAI. The situation worsened when Anthropic, a key partner, withdrew its Claude AI model from Windsurf, citing competitive concerns. The fallout from the failed acquisition was swift and damaging: These challenges left Windsurf in a precarious position, struggling to regain momentum in a highly competitive market. Following the collapse of the OpenAI deal, Google stepped in with a $2.4 billion reverse acqui-hire. This deal focused on acquiring Windsurf's founders and 40 of its top engineers while licensing its technology on a non-exclusive basis. However, the remaining 250 employees were excluded from the deal, sparking widespread criticism on social media and within industry circles. This move highlighted a growing trend in Silicon Valley: prioritizing top-tier talent with lucrative compensation packages while sidelining broader employee participation. The backlash underscored deeper issues within the startup ecosystem, where equity and inclusivity are becoming increasingly contentious topics. Google's approach, while strategic, raised questions about the long-term impact of such practices on organizational culture and employee morale. Cognition Labs ultimately acquired Windsurf's remaining assets, including its intellectual property, product, and workforce. Unlike Google, Cognition Labs adopted a more inclusive approach, offering financial participation and vesting opportunities to all employees. This strategy not only boosted morale but also positioned the company as a more equitable player in the industry. Cognition Labs announced plans to use Windsurf's strengths in several key areas: This inclusive and strategic approach positions Cognition Labs to capitalize on Windsurf's assets while addressing the gaps left by previous deals. The Windsurf saga offers valuable insights into the evolving dynamics of the AI development industry. Several key trends and tensions have emerged: Cognition Labs' acquisition of Windsurf signals a strategic focus on integrating advanced AI coding tools into regulated industries such as government and enterprise. By using Windsurf's FedRamp High certification and combining its tools with the Devon AI agent, Cognition Labs is well-positioned to carve out a competitive edge in the market. At the same time, the competition between AI model makers and tool developers is expected to intensify. As AI coding agents become increasingly central to software development, the balance of power within the AI ecosystem will continue to shift. Windsurf's story serves as a reminder of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, offering valuable lessons for startups and established players alike.

Interview With Cognition CEO After Cognition AI Acquires Windsurf

The acquisition of Windsurf by Cognition AI is more than just a corporate deal -- it's a bold step toward reshaping the future of artificial intelligence coding and AI software engineering. With Windsurf's innovative developer productivity tools now under its wing, Cognition AI is poised to amplify its advanced AI agent, Devon, creating a synergy that could transform how software is built and deployed. But this isn't just about technology; it's about people. By transforming Windsurf into an employee-owned enterprise, Cognition AI has set a precedent for valuing human capital in an industry often dominated by automation. Could this be the blueprint for a new era of tech acquisitions? In this interview by Bloomberg Technology learn how this acquisition bridges the gap between AI-driven automation and developer-centric tools, offering a glimpse into what the future of enterprise software could look like. From the seamless integration of technologies to the forward-thinking employee ownership model, this partnership is packed with lessons for both tech leaders and enterprises navigating the complexities of innovation. But what does this mean for the broader market, and how might it influence the strategies of other major players? The answers lie in the details of this new collaboration, which promises to set new standards for efficiency, scalability, and sustainable growth. The acquisition process was executed with precision, making sure a seamless transition for all Windsurf employees into Cognition AI. This smooth integration underscores the importance of retaining skilled talent and institutional knowledge in the highly competitive AI industry. Furthermore, Windsurf's transformation into an employee-owned company reflects a forward-thinking approach to corporate restructuring. By empowering its workforce with ownership, the company fosters deeper engagement, loyalty, and long-term commitment. This innovative model could serve as a blueprint for future acquisitions in the technology sector, emphasizing the value of human capital alongside technological advancements. At the heart of this acquisition lies the synergy between two innovative technologies that complement each other seamlessly: The integration of these technologies creates a unified ecosystem that enhances collaboration and optimizes workflows. For example, Devon can intelligently delegate specific tasks to Windsurf's productivity tools, making sure projects are completed with greater speed and precision. This collaboration not only boosts productivity but also establishes a new benchmark for AI-driven software development. By combining automation with developer-centric tools, the partnership addresses the growing demand for efficient, scalable, and innovative solutions in the tech industry. Previous articles and guides related to Windsurf that you may find helpful. Both Cognition AI and Windsurf have a strong track record of serving enterprise clients, including major financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Citibank, and JPMorgan. By merging their technologies, the companies aim to deliver robust, scalable solutions tailored to the unique needs of large organizations. In an increasingly competitive market, businesses are turning to AI-driven tools to enhance operational efficiency, reduce costs, and maintain a competitive edge. This acquisition positions Cognition AI as a leader in providing integrated, enterprise-grade AI solutions. The combined expertise of both companies enables them to address complex industry challenges, offering innovative technologies that align with the evolving demands of large-scale enterprises. Windsurf's journey from being a Google-licensed entity to becoming an independent, employee-owned company highlights the challenges and opportunities associated with post-aquihire transformations. Cognition AI's acquisition has preserved Windsurf's core engineering and product teams, making sure continuity in innovation and development. This stability is particularly critical in an industry where retaining skilled talent is a persistent challenge. By maintaining the integrity of Windsurf's workforce, Cognition AI has demonstrated the importance of strategic partnerships in navigating the complexities of the tech landscape. This collaboration underscores how combining complementary strengths can drive growth, foster innovation, and create sustainable value for both companies and their clients. The acquisition of Windsurf by Cognition AI reflects a broader trend in the AI and software engineering markets, where collaboration and integration are increasingly prioritized over standalone operations. By focusing on retaining valuable teams and fostering employee ownership, the partnership sets a precedent for future acquisitions in the technology sector. Key market implications include: As the AI market continues to evolve, such strategies are likely to shape the future of technology development and deployment. By emphasizing sustainable growth, collaboration, and employee empowerment, Cognition AI and Windsurf have set a new standard for how acquisitions can create lasting value. The acquisition of Windsurf by Cognition AI represents a pivotal moment in the evolution of AI and software engineering. By integrating their technologies and adopting an employee-first approach, the companies have created a model for sustainable growth and innovation. This partnership not only enhances the efficiency of software engineering processes but also establishes a new standard for enterprise-focused AI solutions. As the industry continues to advance, the collaboration between Cognition AI and Windsurf serves as a compelling example of how strategic acquisitions can drive progress, foster innovation, and redefine market dynamics.

Windsurf IDE Acquired By Cognition Creators of Devin AI

After a number of weeks of turmoil at Windsurf with OpenAI $3 billion acquisition falling through and a new $2 .4 billion deal by Google acquiring its founders and non-exclusive rights to its technology. Cognition the creators of Devin AI have today announced the acquisition of Windsurf and the employees left in the lurch after the Google deal. The acquisition brings together Cognition's innovative AI tools -- such as Devin, Deep Wiki, and Ask Devin -- and Windsurf's Agentic IDE to create a unified platform. This platform is designed to allow AI agents to operate seamlessly within the development environment, allowing tasks like code generation, debugging, and documentation to be handled efficiently. By reducing the need for context switching, this integration is set to boost productivity and allow you to focus on higher-level tasks that require creativity and critical thinking. The unified platform will also provide developers with a more cohesive experience, making sure that all tools and resources are easily accessible. This approach not only simplifies the development process but also ensures that AI becomes a natural and intuitive part of your workflow. One of the most fantastic aspects of this collaboration is the integration of remote AI agents into the Agentic IDE. These agents are designed to assist you in real-time, handling a variety of tasks that can otherwise be time-consuming or repetitive. For example, you could assign an AI agent to manage complex debugging processes while you focus on designing new features or refining your codebase. Key benefits of remote AI agents include: This division of labor not only accelerates development timelines but also ensures that your workflow remains streamlined and efficient. By using these agents, you can achieve a balance between human creativity and machine precision. Explore further guides and articles from our vast library that you may find relevant to your interests in AI software. Cognition and Windsurf share a vision of fostering collaboration between humans and AI agents. By embedding these agents directly into your development process, they aim to create a more interactive and intuitive working relationship. Tools like Ask Devin allow you to query AI agents for real-time insights, while Deep Wiki ensures that critical knowledge and documentation are always at your fingertips. This collaborative approach enables you to: By prioritizing human-agent collaboration, this partnership seeks to redefine how developers interact with AI, making the process more intuitive and productive. The partnership between Cognition and Windsurf is expected to drive significant innovation in AI development tools. By integrating innovative technologies into the Agentic IDE, this collaboration aims to simplify and enhance your workflow. Whether you are an experienced developer or new to AI, these tools are designed to be user-friendly, responsive, and adaptable to your specific needs. Key advancements include: By focusing on user experience, Cognition and Windsurf aim to make software development not only more efficient but also more enjoyable. This emphasis on usability ensures that developers at all skill levels can benefit from these advancements. Cognition's acquisition of Windsurf represents a pivotal milestone in the evolution of AI-driven development environments. By integrating remote AI agents into the Agentic IDE, this partnership is set to redefine how you approach software development. With a focus on automation, workflow optimization, and human-agent collaboration, these advancements promise to push the boundaries of what's possible in AI development. As these technologies continue to evolve, you can look forward to a future where seamless task execution and innovative tools become the standard. This collaboration not only accelerates the pace of innovation but also sets the stage for a new era in software development -- one where AI and human ingenuity work hand in hand to achieve unprecedented results.

Cognition to Acquire Windsurf After Google Poaches Founders and Researchers | PYMNTS.com

Cognition said in its blog post that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Windsurf, including the company's intellectual property (IP), product, trademark, brand and people. The Windsurf team will continue operating in its current manner in the immediate term, and Cognition will integrate the company's capabilities and IP into its own products over the coming months, according to the post. The post also shared a note sent to the Cognition team, in which Cognition Co-Founder and CEO Scott Wu said the acquisition will enable Cognition to "move even faster on our mission of building the future of software engineering" with its AI software engineer, Devin. "As you all know, we've had strong momentum and adoption over the last few months," Wu said in the note. "For many enterprise engineering teams, Devin is already a top contributor." Windsurf said in its blog post that its team will join forces with Cognition, its users and customers will "remain in steady hands and enjoy better product innovation than ever," and its IP will be integrated into Cognition. In a note shared with the company's team and included in the post, Windsurf CEO Jeff Wang said that despite the turbulence caused by the loss of the company's founders and research team, "so much of what makes us great is intact." "As you may have heard me (only half jokingly) say before, [Cognition was] the only team we were scared of," Wang said. "Among all the teams in the AI space, Cognition was literally the one we have respected the most, and they are a perfect fit to bring Windsurf to the next phase."

Google hires Windsurf CEO and researchers to advance AI ambitions

(Reuters) -Google has hired Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and select members of the coding tool's research and development team to join its DeepMind division, a Google spokesperson said on Friday, in a move to strengthen itself in the race for AI leadership. Mohan and the Windsurf team will focus on agentic coding initiatives at Google DeepMind, primarily working on the Gemini project. The development comes as tech giants including Alphabet and Meta Platforms aggressively chase high-profile acquisitions and offer multi-million-dollar pay packages to attract top talent in the race to lead the next wave of AI. "We're excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf's team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding," a Google spokesperson told Reuters. Google will not acquire any stake in Windsurf, but will receive a non-exclusive license to certain Windsurf technologies. The Verge reported on Friday Windsurf's head of business, Jeff Wang, has been appointed its interim CEO, and Graham Moreno, vice president of global sales, will be president, effective immediately. The majority of Windsurf's roughly 250 employees will remain with the company, which has announced plans to prioritize innovation for its enterprise clients. The move effectively ends OpenAI's planned acquisition of Windsurf. Previously, OpenAI had agreed to acquire the company for about $3 billion, Bloomberg News reported in May. (Reporting by Kritika Lamba in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)

Cognition AI to buy Windsurf, doubling down on AI-driven coding

(Reuters) -Artificial intelligence startup Cognition AI on Monday agreed to acquire Windsurf, an integrated development environment platform, strengthening its position in the rapidly evolving enterprise software market. The deal follows Google's $2.4 billion deal with Windsurf last week aimed at acquiring top talent and securing licensing rights to its technology. The deal with Google marks a win for Windsurf's backers, who have raised $243 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Greenoaks, and General Catalyst, and was last valued at $1.25 billion one year ago, according to PitchBook. The move reflects a broader trend among technology giants such as Alphabet and Meta, which are making bold, high-value acquisitions and offering lucrative compensation packages to secure leading industry talent amid intensifying competition in the AI sector. The deal with Cognition covers Windsurf's intellectual property, product line, brand, and business operations, as well as its highly regarded engineering, product, and go-to-market teams. While the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, Windsurf brings with it $82 million in annual recurring revenue and a customer base of more than 350 enterprises. "Among all the teams in the AI space, Cognition was literally the one we have respected the most, and they are a perfect fit to bring Windsurf to the next phase," Jeff Wang, Windsurf's interim chief executive officer, said in an email to employees. In the immediate term, Windsurf will continue to operate independently, with Cognition pledging significant investment to integrate Windsurf's technology and unique assets into its own product suite, including its flagship autonomous agent, Devin. Earlier, Windsurf had been engaged in months-long discussions with OpenAI regarding a potential acquisition that could have valued the company at $3 billion, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters in June. (Reporting by Kritika Lamba in Bengaluru; Editing by Mohammed Safi Shamsi)