Google hires Windsurf’s CEO and top AI talent in $2.4B deal to advance agentic coding

Just a few hours after OpenAI officially pulled the plug on its $3 billion acquisition of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf following IP concerns from Microsoft, Google quickly swooped, announcing an agreement to bring in the co-founder and CEO, Varun Mohan.

As part of the deal, Google is bringing over key members of Windsurf’s senior R&D team. The search giant isn’t acquiring or investing in Windsurf but is paying $2.4 billion in licensing fees and compensation for nonexclusive rights to select technologies, according to a person familiar with the terms. The agreement allows Windsurf to continue licensing its tech to other companies, CNBC reported.

“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 said in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.

The move follows Windsurf’s earlier acquisition talks with OpenAI, which were reportedly valued at around $3 billion. OpenAI and Windsurf had entered an exclusivity period to finalize a deal, but that window has since closed, according to an OpenAI spokesperson.

Google Joins the Vibe Coding Race, Strikes $2.4B Deal with Windsurf

This latest deal heats up an already intense battle among tech giants trying to secure top AI talent. Meta recently made waves by hiring Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy, backed by a $14.3 billion investment. In the same spirit, Google’s latest deal brings in some of the minds behind a startup that’s gained serious traction this year thanks to what many in the developer world are calling “vibe coding.”

Windsurf has become a favorite among developers—and increasingly non-developers—who are using new AI tools to write code more intuitively. That shift in how people build software has helped Windsurf grow fast and attract serious attention from both investors and competitors like Cursor, another startup that’s been in OpenAI’s sights.

Douglas Chen, Windsurf’s other co-founder, is among the team members joining Google. Jeff Wang, who had been Windsurf’s head of business for two years, has stepped in as interim CEO. In a post on X, Wang said most of the company’s “world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product to maximize its impact in the enterprise.”

This isn’t the first time Google has hired key individuals from a promising AI startup without fully acquiring the company. It did something similar last summer with Character.AI. Amazon and Microsoft have played the same game—Amazon with its partnership with Adept, and Microsoft with its high-profile grab of Inflection AI talent earlier this year.

Microsoft has also been pushing agent-style coding through its Visual Studio Code editor, tying it into the broader trend of vibe coding. Back in April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI was already responsible for writing up to 30% of the company’s code.

Google’s deal with Windsurf, first reported by The Verge, marks another moment in a growing pattern: tech giants are writing enormous checks to secure the people and tools behind the next phase of AI software development, without necessarily buying the entire company.