Just days after Google stripped away Windsurf's top leadership in a massive $2.4 billion reverse-acquihire, Cognition—the company behind viral AI coding agent Devin—announced it's buying what remains of the AI coding startup.
- Windsurf brings $82M in annual revenue and 350+ enterprise clients.
- All Windsurf employees get financial upside and accelerated vesting.
- Deal follows Google's $2.4B acquihire and expired $3B OpenAI offer.
- Combines Devin's autonomous agents with Windsurf's IDE for better developer tools.
After OpenAI's reported $3 billion acquisition offer for Windsurf collapsed, Google swooped in with its own deal. But instead of buying the company outright, Google opted for a "reverse-acquihire"—paying $2.4 billion in licensing fees while hiring CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and select research staff.
The move left most of Windsurf's 250-person team in limbo. Even worse, employees who'd joined in the last year reportedly received no payout from Google's billion-dollar deal—a detail that sparked outrage across social media.
Cognition has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Windsurf.
— Cognition (@cognition_labs) July 14, 2025
The acquisition includes Windsurf’s IP, product, trademark and brand, and strong business. Above all, it includes Windsurf’s world-class people, whom we’re privileged to welcome to our team.
We are also honoring… pic.twitter.com/N2HX0Mzz65
Enter Cognition. The startup behind Devin, the autonomous AI coding agent that went viral last year, signed a definitive agreement to acquire Windsurf's intellectual property, product, and remaining workforce. Cognition explicitly states that 100% of Windsurf employees will participate financially, with all vesting cliffs waived and accelerated vesting for work to date.
The acquisition makes strategic sense beyond just being a talent rescue mission. Windsurf pioneered the "agentic IDE" with its editor that combines deep codebase understanding with real-time awareness of developer actions. Windsurf had reached $82 million in annual recurring revenue with over 350 enterprise customers before the Google raid.
Cognition was among the first to launch a fully autonomous AI coding agent with Devin, which promised to automate entire coding tasks rather than just assist with them. But early reviews found Devin made mistakes, suggesting the technology was ahead of its time. Meanwhile, Cursor and Windsurf built successful businesses around AI-powered development environments.
Now Cognition gets the best of both worlds—the versatility of offering AI coding agents and an AI-powered IDE. The plan is to eventually integrate Windsurf's capabilities into Devin, creating what Cognition describes as an environment where developers can "plan tasks in an IDE powered by Devin's codebase understanding, delegate chunks of work to multiple Devins in parallel, complete the highest-leverage parts yourself with autocomplete, and stitch it all back together."
The acquisition caps off a frenzied week that highlights just how viciously competitive the AI coding tools space has become. For Windsurf's employees, Cognition's acquisition offers something Google's deal conspicuously didn't: a chance to actually benefit from the company they helped build.