Google just landed a big AI talent coup, scooping up Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of AI coding startup Windsurf. Mohan, along with other senior Windsurf R&D staff, will join Google DeepMind.
Google isn’t investing in Windsurf but secured a nonexclusive license to some of its tech. Windsurf can still license its technology elsewhere.
This move comes hot on the heels of OpenAI’s $3 billion acquisition talks with Windsurf that fell through earlier this year. Meta has also been aggressively courting OpenAI engineers, recently bringing in Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang with a $14.3 billion deal. 
Windsurf co-founder Douglas Chen is also moving to Google, confirmed by Windsurf’s interim CEO Jeff Wang on X. Most of Windsurf’s team will keep building their product to target enterprise clients.
Windsurf’s vibe coding platform — AI-powered coding assistants — has gained steam this year. Other players like Cursor have also attracted acquisition interest from OpenAI.
Google’s poaching isn’t new. It picked up key staff from Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have done similar hires, snapping up talent from Adept and Inflection.
Microsoft is pushing AI-powered “agent mode” in Visual Studio Code, and CEO Satya Nadella says AI now writes up to 30% of its code.
The deal is another escalation in the AI talent wars among tech giants fueling advances in automated coding.
Jeff Wang, Windsurf interim CEO, wrote on X:
"Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise."
A Google spokesperson said:
"We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding."
"We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere."
Watch: Google pushes “AI Mode” on homepage
