Google Hires Windsurf CEO and Top Talent, Disrupting OpenAI's Acquisition Plans

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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)