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.

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.

AI startup Windsurf is officially off the marketbut not to OpenAI. Instead, Cognition has stepped in with a deal to acquire the company after OpenAIs $3 billion bid fell apart. And in a surprising twist,

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 hired Windsurf’s core team and licensed its AI tech for $2.4B to support agentic coding in DeepMind’s Gemini project.

OpenAI’s $3B Windsurf deal falls through as Google DeepMind picks up key talent and tech in a non-exclusive agreement.

Google is set to hire Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and some top researchers at the artificial intelligence startup. According to reports, the development happened after OpenAI’s deal to acquire the AI coding startup for $3 billion collapsed.