Cognition, the startup behind AI coding agent Devin, announced Monday its acquisition of AI coding startup Windsurf. According to a blog post by Cognition, this acquisition includes Windsurf’s IP, product, trademark and brand, as well as its employees. The company states the Windsurf team will continue to operate the way it used to, and Cognition will continue to accelerate the development of Devin.
Over the coming months, the company will be investing heavily in integrating Windsurf’s capabilities and unique IP into Cognition’s products.
The acquisition comes just days after Google hired Windsurf’s now former CEO Varun Mohan, along with co-founder Douglas Chen and other senior team members in a $2.4 billion reverse-acquihire. Earlier, it was reported that OpenAI was set to acquire Windsurf for $3 billion, however, the deal failed to go through.
READ: Windsurf alleges Anthropic is restricting direct access to Claude AI models (June 5, 2025)
“The last 72 hours have been the wildest rollercoaster ride of my career,” said Jeff Wang, Windsurf’s former head of business, who was made interim CEO following Google’s recruitment of the startup’s leaders. “To our new teammates at Cognition: we at Windsurf feel incredibly lucky to be joining a team that shares our vision, our deep commitment to our users, and — most importantly — our values.”
Cognition CEO Scott Wu said in a memo that every new employee “will be treated the same way as existing employees with transparency, fairness, and deep respect for their abilities and value.”
“After today, our efforts will be as a united and aligned team. There’s only one boat and we’re all in it together,” he added. Wu also stated that there has never been “a more exciting time to build.”
While Cognition did not reveal the price of the acquisition, the company says Windsurf reached $82 million in ARR, with enterprise ARR doubling quarter-over-quarter. Cognition said Windsurf’s user base reached at least 350 enterprise customers and “hundreds of thousands” of daily active users.
READ: Google hires Windsurf’s CEO after OpenAI talks collapse (July 14, 2025)
Last month, Windsurf revealed that Anthropic significantly reduced its first-party access to its Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude 3.5 Sonnet AI models. This development had been linked to the then-ongoing acquisition talks involving OpenAI. “We really are just trying to enable our customers who are going to sustainably be working with us in the future,” Anthropic Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer Jared Kaplan said while addressing this issue. “I think it would be odd for us to be selling Claude to OpenAI.”
Several Windsurf customers told TechCrunch they switched to other services that offered Claude AI models such as Cursor. Cognition noted in its press release that Windsurf will now have full access to Claude AI models once again.
The acquisition of Windsurf positions Cognition as a serious player in the AI coding space. With the addition of the startup’s IP and talent, Cognition is now in a better position to compete with the AI giants like OpenAI, Cursor and Anthropic.