Recently, the plan for OpenAI to acquire Windsurf has failed, drawing widespread attention in the industry. According to a report by Techcrunch, Google successfully hired Varun Mohan, CEO of Windsurf, co-founder Douglas Chen, and some members of the R&D team. These talents will join Google's DeepMind team, focusing on the development of coding Agents and Gemini models. This move shows Google's high recognition of the technical capabilities of the Windsurf team.

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Image source note: The image is AI-generated, and the image licensing service provider is Midjourney.

Windsurf was previously known as Codeium. Since its establishment in 2021, the company has raised more than $200 million in funding and reached a valuation of $1.25 billion last year. Its advanced technology has attracted the attention of multiple tech giants, leading to rumors that OpenAI wanted to acquire the company. However, in the end, Google's involvement was not aimed at acquiring Windsurf, but rather at recruiting its outstanding talent. In addition, Google obtained non-exclusive licenses for some of Windsurf's technologies, but did not own or control the company. Specific financial details remain undisclosed.

Several months ago, code generation startups such as Windsurf and Cursor were highly visible. Cursor successfully raised $900 million in May, with a valuation of $10 billion, while Windsurf also attracted OpenAI's interest in acquiring it for $3 billion. However, as large-scale foundational models continue to be updated, these startups quickly lost their spotlight. Anthropic launched Claude4 in May, claiming it to be the best coding model globally, capable of working autonomously for hours. At the same time, Google also launched Gemini 2.5 earlier this year, which received praise for its multimodal reasoning and wide context window.

After this change, Jeff Wang, the business head of Windsurf, will serve as the interim CEO, and Graham Moreno, the global sales vice president, will serve as the president. Despite the failure of the acquisition plan, Windsurf will continue to operate independently to face future challenges and opportunities.

Key points:

🌐 The plan for OpenAI to acquire Windsurf has failed, and Google has successfully recruited its core team members.  

💰 Windsurf has raised over $200 million since its establishment, reaching a valuation of $1.25 billion last year.  

🤖 Google obtained non-exclusive licenses for some of Windsurf's technologies, and both parties will continue to operate independently.