In a $2.4 billion deal, Google recruited the chief executive and a co-founder of Windsurf, which OpenAI had been in talks to buy, as the battle to dominate artificial intelligence escalates.

The acquihire-on-steroids trend is unique to this tech boom, and could have big implications for current and future AI founders.

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

Sharing the same, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind and Nobel Laureate Demis Hassabis welcomed the duo and the rest of the engineers from Windsurf AI. He wrote, “ Excited to be working with them to turbocharge our Gemini efforts on coding agents, tool use, and much more .”

Google snags Windsurf’s leadership and licenses its tech for $2.4B, while OpenAI loses a major acquisition opportunity.

April 17, 2025: OpenAI has released o3 and 04-mini, two reasoning AI models designed to be extra good at programming, math, and science and that can use images to “think,” according to Engadget, This means that users can upload sketches or diagrams, for example, and even if they are of low quality, o3 and 04-mini will understand what is meant.

The artificial intelligence giant’s dizzying corporate structure and acquisitions raise privacy and safety concerns.