What Happened with Windsurf ?

Windsurf is an AI-powered developer tool that enables users to build full-stack applications using natural language prompts. They compete with Cursor and recently had a bunch of buyout offer drama.

Windsurf raised a Series C in Sept 2024 at $1.25 billion value and around April 2025 they were in talks for a 2.85 funding round. OpenAI made a formal $3 billion acquisition offer. Google and Cognition AI also entered negotiations at similar ranges by July 2025.

Google hired key staff from Windsurf, specifically CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and several top researchers. There are reports that Google offered about $2.4 billion in a deal. The $2.4 billion deal that covered nonexclusive licensing of Windsurf’s AI coding technology as well as compensation for the incoming team members.

The remainder of Windsurf got picked up by Devin for undisclosed cash and shares. Devin also got the AI coding technology and the remaining staff and the ongoing business. This was likely in the range of a $1-2 billion mostly stock deal. Devin had a valuation of about $4 billion and not much cash.

Windsurf had about 160 to 300 staff.

Windsurf’s ARR (annual recurring revenue) grew rapidly from $40 million (Feb 2025) to as high as $82 million (mid-2025)

Cursor completed a $900 million Series C at a $9.9 billion valuation in June 2025

Cursor surpassed $500 million ARR by mid-2025.

The Windsurf platform combines a chat-based interface with advanced code generation capabilities, allowing developers to prototype, scaffold, and deploy production-ready applications rapidly. Windsurf offers real-time AI code completion, intelligent suggestions, error correction, code refactoring, and powerful search within major IDEs. It’s positioned as a collaborative AI cockpit that helps developers write, review, and navigate codebases more efficiently, rather than simply automating basic tasks. Key products include the Windsurf Plugin (for popular IDEs), the Windsurf Editor (a standalone environment blending copiloting with agent capabilities), and Cascade (collaborative “AI flows” for long-term planning and project management.

Cognition Labs and Devin

Cognition Labs focuses on building end-to-end software agents that act as collaborative AI teammates for engineering teams. They made big waves with what they claimed is a fully autonomous software engineer.

Devin can plan and execute multi-step coding projects, writing and debugging code in languages like Python and Rust, deploying applications, and even learning from documentation or fixing bugs independently.

Goldman Sachs began piloting Devin in July 2025 as an internal autonomous coding agent to boost productivity of 12,000 human developers. Goldman describe Devin as a new employee in a hybrid workforce model aimed at boosting productivity by 3-4x over previous tools.

Prior to the Windsurf acquisition, Cognition was mainly pre-revenue. They had not generated significant revenue.