Cognition is acquiring Windsurf days after Google DeepMind hired its CEO and research leaders, and months after OpenAI offered to buy it.

Cognition acquires AI coding startup Windsurf, gaining its IP, talent, and user base, strengthening its position to compete with OpenAI, Cursor, and Anthropic.

In an unexpected turn of events, artificial intelligence startup Cognition announced this week that it is acquiring AI coding startup Windsurf, just days after news that OpenAI’s planned $3 billion buy of Windsurf had fallen apart.

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.

Questions swirled about Windsurf's future after Google's surprise deal. Now, Windsurf will have a new owner.

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

Cognition CEO Scott Wu and interim Windsurf CEO Jeff Wang said they would start by integrating the AI-powered engineer Devin into Windsurf.

How OpenAI's $3B Windsurf deal was sabotaged by Anthropic and vetoed by Microsoft, leading to a Google poach and a final Cognition rescue.