Google bolsters AI with $2.4 billion deal to hire Windsurf team

To bolster its AI technology, Google has roped in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf. Mohan, along with his longtime friend and co-founder Douglas Chen, will now be working with the DeepMind team at Google.

According to a CNBC.com report, the search engine giant is also going to hire other senior team members from the research & development department of Windsurf. However, Google will take a non-exclusive license to certain technology of the AI startup, which means Windsurf is free to license its technology to others, as per the news report.

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Google is reportedly paying $2.4 billion for compensation and licensing fees. Before Google, OpenAI was in talks with Windsurf for a $3 billion acquisition deal. They both had entered into exclusivity to finalize the acquisition, but the period expired, cnmbc.com mentioned. The development could be a major setback for ChatGPT-maker as the company has lost another deal with an AI coding startup before Windsurf. OpenAI had also approached Anysphere about acquiring Cursor, but the deal fell through as the startup was not interested in getting acquired by any big tech.

'About Varun Mohan'

Windsurf's co-founder, Mohan, is the son of Indian immigrants. He completed his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, with a minor in Mathematics, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 2014 to 2017. Mohan then pursued a Master's degree in Engineering, Computer Science at MIT, which he completed in 2017.

During his academic tenure, he has worked as an intern at Quora, Cloudian Inc, and Databricks. After completing his master's from MIT, Mohan worked as a tech lead at Nuro for over three years. The Indo-American CEO co-founded Windsurf in June 2021 in California.

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Big tech giants, including Meta, are vying to become the leader in AI technology. As a result, startups leveraging generative AI to aid programmers in coding have emerged as the most in-demand in the tech landscape. Last month, Facebook parent Meta poached Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy. Meta has invested $14.3 billion--the second-largest-ever deal after its $19 billion buyout of WhatsApp.