Explore Cognition AI’s acquisition of Windsurf and its impact on AI, software development, and employee ownership in the tech industry.

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.

The move is the culmination of a turbulent period for Windsurf, and indicates that agentic IDEs have become a new battleground.

In a surprising move, Cognition– the makers of autonomous coding tool Devin— acquired what was left of its rival Windsurf after the company’s cofounders Varun Mohan and Douglas Chen and other staff members were poached by Google DeepMind for $2.

Bay Area tech companies are battling to build popular, useful artificial intelligence — and the fight just ripped apart a startup. Windsurf, an AI company based in Mountain View, began last week as a reported $3 billion acquisition target for OpenAI.

Google scores a major win in the AI talent war by snapping up key minds behind one of coding AI’s most promising startups.