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.

Windsurf is an AI-powered developer tool that enables users to build full-stack applications using natural language prompts. They compete with Cursor and

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.

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

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.

Hot on the heels of a leadership shakeup at Windsurf last week, Cognition announced today it has signed an agreement to acquire Windsurf. The whiplash here explains at least some of last week's turmoil surrounding Google's hiring of top talent at Windsurf.

Cognition said the deal structure eliminates existing vesting cliffs and provides accelerated vesting for current staff members, recognizing their contributions to building Windsurf's business foundation.