Windsurf built an AI coding tool so good that three of the biggest names in AI fought over it in 72 hours. In July 2025, Google paid $2.4 billion to hire founder Varun Mohan and roughly 40 engineers. Then Cognition, the maker of Devin, bought whatever was left for a reported $250 million. An OpenAI deal to buy the whole company for $3 billion had collapsed days earlier over a Microsoft IP fight. One startup, three suitors, one very strange week.
Founded
2021
HQ
Mountain View, USA
Total Raised
$243 million
Founder
Varun Mohan, Douglas Chen
Status
Acquired by Cognition (2025)
Website
windsurf.comTHE ORIGIN STORY
It started in 2021 as Exafunction, a company building tools to make GPUs run machine learning faster. Founders Varun Mohan and Douglas Chen had met at MIT.
The GPU business was fine, just not exciting. So in 2022 they pivoted to Codeium, a free AI code-completion tool aimed straight at GitHub Copilot.
The free tier was the whole hook. It pulled in hundreds of thousands of developers fast.
WHAT THEY ACTUALLY DO
Windsurf makes an AI-powered code editor. Developers use it to write, explain, and fix code faster.
The base tools were free to pull users in. Companies then pay for team plans, higher usage limits, and enterprise features like security and private deployment.
In plain terms, they gave away the razor and sold the blades to businesses.
THE PRODUCTS
Windsurf Editor is the flagship, an AI-native IDE built on VS Code with an agent called Cascade that can edit across many files on its own. Codeium was the original free autocomplete plugin that started it all.
Together they pushed the idea of the AI copilot toward an AI that just does the work for you.
HOW THEY GREW
The free Codeium plugin was the growth engine. Give developers unlimited AI autocomplete for nothing, and they tell their friends.
By August 2024, more than 700,000 developers were active. Then they bet the company on Windsurf, an AI-native editor built around agentic coding, where the AI does whole tasks instead of just finishing your line.
The rename from Codeium to Windsurf simply followed the product that was winning.
THE HARD PART
Being a small player in a market where the giants build their own version of you. GitHub Copilot has Microsoft behind it.
Cursor raised enormous rounds. And the AI models Windsurf leaned on came from the same companies that could crush it.
The 2025 saga proved the point. OpenAI wanted to buy them, then Microsoft IP rights blew up the deal, then Google took the founders and Cognition took the shell.
Great product, brutal neighborhood.
MONEY TRAIL
Series B
2024 · Led by Kleiner Perkins
$65M raised
$500M valuation
Series C
2024 · Led by General Catalyst
$150M raised
$1.3B valuation
WHO BACKED THEM
Kleiner Perkins, Greenoaks, and General Catalyst were the main backers. Kleiner led the early rounds and stuck around.
General Catalyst led the $150 million Series C in August 2024 that valued the company at $1.25 billion. When Google's $2.4 billion talent deal landed in 2025, those investors reportedly got paid out even though Google took no equity.
That is a very unusual outcome.
Related Profiles
Companies
Cognition AI
Cognition, maker of the Devin coding agent, acquired what remained of Windsurf in July 2025 after Google poached the founders. It took the IP, brand, product, and team for a reported $250 million.
Cursor
Cursor, built by Anysphere, was Windsurf's fiercest rival in AI code editors. Both raced to turn autocomplete into full agentic coding, and both became acquisition targets in the 2025 AI talent wars.
Head-to-Head
Compare Windsurf vs another company.