US-based tech giant Google on Friday announced a string of hires from AI coding startup Windsurf, including the company’s co-founder and CEO, Varun Mohan, according to a CNBC report.
While the company is not directly investing in Windsurf, it will take a nonexclusive license to certain technology of the company. Windsurf will remain free to license its technology to others. Under this deal, Google will pay $2.4 billion in licensing fees and compensation, a source familiar with the matter told CNBC.
Along with Mohan, the search giant will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. According to the report, Windsurf co-founder Douglas Chen will be among those joining Google.
“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email to CNBC.
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The deal comes months after Windsurf was reportedly in talks with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition, CNBC had reported back in April. OpenAI and Windsurf had entered into exclusivity to finalise an acquisition, but the period has expired, an OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC.
Recently, Windsurf gained popularity after offering an option for using new-age AI to write code called vibe coding. This feature has garnered increasing demand for developers and non-developers, driving revenue for Windsurf and its competitors, such as Cursor.
This is not the first time Google has hired select people from a startup. CNBC noted that the company implemented the same strategy with Character.AI.
A similar AI talent hiring trend is also followed by companies like Amazon and Microsoft.
Edited by Suman Singh
