Windsurf is an AI-powered code editor built around Cascade, its agentic flow-state assistant that can reason across a codebase, plan changes, and execute multi-step coding tasks. Formerly known as Codeium, the product evolved from an AI autocomplete plugin into a full AI-native integrated development environment aimed at accelerating real software development workflows.
Windsurf's differentiator is its agentic IDE experience: rather than only suggesting completions, Cascade is designed to maintain awareness of project context and carry out coordinated edits, navigation, and tasks, keeping developers in a continuous flow state while delegating mechanical work to the agent.
The company was founded in 2021 by Varun Mohan and Douglas Chen, originally as Exafunction, a startup focused on GPU optimization. It pivoted to the Codeium developer-tools product and, in April 2025, rebranded to Windsurf to reflect its shift toward a full agentic IDE used by a large developer base.
Windsurf's corporate history is unusually eventful. After raising venture funding across multiple rounds, the company became the subject of a high-profile 2025 sequence in which Google hired its CEO, co-founder, and key staff and licensed technology, while Cognition, the maker of the Devin coding agent, acquired the remaining Windsurf business, IP, product, and customer base.
As a result, the Windsurf product continues under Cognition's ownership, alongside Cognition's broader agentic coding portfolio, which is an important consideration for prospective adopters evaluating long-term roadmap and support.
Windsurf is best for software developers and engineering teams that want an agentic, AI-native IDE for everyday coding. Teams requiring long-term vendor stability may want to weigh the post-acquisition ownership structure, and developers preferring a minimal autocomplete-only tool may find a full agentic IDE more than they need.