Cognition acquires Windsurf after Google licensing deal

Cognition plans to integrate Windsurf’s capabilities into its own products.

Artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Cognition is acquiring Windsurf, just days after Google paid a hefty sum to license Windsurf’s tech and hire its top dogs.

While Cognition did not disclose the value of the acquisition, co-founder and CEO Scott Wu said that the company will be purchasing Windsurf’s talent, products, intellectual property and its clientele of more than 350 enterprises.

Founded in 2023, Cognition’s flagship product is an AI coding agent, named Devin, designed to speed up software development. In March, Bloomberg reported that the start-up hit a near $4bn valuation.

While Windsurf is an AI coding assistant, which raised a Series C funding round last year at a valuation of $1.25bn.

Both start-ups are backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. While Windsurf is also backed by General Catalyst and Kleiner Perkins, and Cognition’s investors include Khosla Ventures, Pear VC and 8VC.

The acquisition will see Cognition “investing heavily” in integrating Windsurf’s capabilities into its own products, Wu said. According to him, the acquisition is a doubling down on the start-up’s aim to build the “future of software”.

Last week, Google reportedly paid $2.4bn for non-exclusive rights to license Windsurf’s AI coding tech. The tech giant also poached the start-up’s co-founder Douglas Chen and CEO Varun Mohan, as well as some of its R&D team, hiring them to join Google DeepMind.

In the interim, Windsurf announced its head of business Jeff Wang to take over as CEO while Graham Moreno, the start-up’s vice-president of global sales, is set to become president.

Windsurf was initially expected to be snapped up by OpenAI in a $3bn deal earlier this year. However, that fell through.

The AI frenzy is escalating, with firms making several large acquisitions and poaching upper-level talent to advance their position as a leader in the tech.

Earlier this year, Salesforce acquired Informatica, OpenAI bought Io to create AI-powered hardware and Capgemini purchased WNS for $3.3bn – just to name a few.

While in a mass talent hunt, Meta managed to hire Apple’s AI models lead Ruoming Pang after tapping Daniel Gross, the CEO and co-founder of Safe Superintelligence, and invested more than $14bn in Scale AI, hiring the start-up’s CEO Alexandr Wang.

Microsoft managed to poach Meta’s former engineering chief Jay Parikh to lead its AI group. While in 2024, the company hired Google DeepMind’s co-founder Mustafa Suleyman to lead Microsoft AI.

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