In an unexpected turn of events, artificial intelligence startup Cognition announced this week that it is acquiring AI coding startup Windsurf, just days after news that OpenAI’s planned $3 billion buy of Windsurf had fallen apart.

For years, code-editing tools like Cursor, Windsurf, and GitHub’s Copilot have been the standard for AI-powered software development. But as agentic AI grows more powerful and vibe-coding takes off, a subtle shift has changed how AI systems are interacting with software.

Windsurf is an AI-powered developer tool that enables users to build full-stack applications using natural language prompts. They compete with Cursor and

Before we get to today’s column about Cognition buying Windsurf, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday spoke to Jessica Lessin, our editor in chief, for the inaugural episode of TITV, a new daily tech show,

Cognition CEO Scott Wu and interim Windsurf CEO Jeff Wang said they would start by integrating the AI-powered engineer Devin into Windsurf

As the AI talent wars escalate, Google’s new arrangement with startup Windsurf shows tech companies see a lot of value in coding assistants.

Besides CEO Varun Mohan, several key R&D staff of Windsurf, including co-founder Douglas Chen, have joined Google.