In a surprising move, Cognition– the makers of autonomous coding tool Devin— acquired what was left of its rival Windsurf after the company’s cofounders Varun Mohan and Douglas Chen and other staff members were poached by Google DeepMind for $2.

The move is the culmination of a turbulent period for Windsurf, and indicates that agentic IDEs have become a new battleground.

Varun Mohan, MIT-educated co-founder of AI startup Windsurf, was hired by Google in a move that came after OpenAI’s reported bid to acquire the company.

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Google's strategic acquisition of Windsurf leaders strengthens its AI coding efforts amidst intense competition for top talent.

Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan & co-founder Douglas Chen to lead its Gemini AI project, signalling a major move in the AI talent war against rivals like OpenAI

Google wants its AI models to become bigger in coding. It has now hired the CEO of one of the top startups in that area.

The AI talent raid seems to be intensifying. Google has now onboarded several key members from Windsurf, a startup that works on AI code generation. Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of Windsurf, has been brought in along with co-founder Douglas Chen and other senior research and development staff from the company.

Varun Mohan is of Indian descent, having been born and raised in Sunnyvale, California, by children of Indian immigrants. He went to The Harker School in San Jose, and then to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned a Bachelor's and Master of Engineering in Computer Science.