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.

AI startup Windsurf is officially off the marketbut not to OpenAI. Instead, Cognition has stepped in with a deal to acquire the company after OpenAIs $3 billion bid fell apart. And in a surprising twist,

In a stunning reversal, Google DeepMind acquires Windsurf’s top talent just weeks after OpenAI’s $3B deal collapsed over IP tensions with Microsoft.

As of Friday, Windsurf’s head of business, Jeff Wang, will take over as the startup’s interim CEO, he announced in a post on social media. Most of Windsurf’s 250 person team is not headed to Google DeepMind and will continue offering its AI coding tools for enterprise customers.

Alphabet's Google has hired several key staff members from AI code generation startup Windsurf, the companies announced on Friday, in a surprise move following an attempt by its rival OpenAI to acquire the startup.

Bay Area tech companies are battling to build popular, useful artificial intelligence — and the fight just ripped apart a startup. Windsurf, an AI company based in Mountain View, began last week as a reported $3 billion acquisition target for OpenAI.