Google Hires Windsurf CEO to Boost Its AI Research Team

Post by : Monika

Photo: Reuters

In a big step to make its artificial intelligence (AI) tools smarter, Google has hired the CEO and several top researchers from a small but powerful AI company called Windsurf. This move shows that Google wants to stay ahead in the fast-moving world of AI.

The news was shared by Google on Friday, July 11, 2025. The company said it brought in the whole team from Windsurf, including its CEO Jacob Devlin, who is well-known in the AI field. This team is now working at Google DeepMind, which is Google’s main division for AI development.

What Is Windsurf?
Windsurf was a tiny startup company focused on building advanced AI models. Even though the company was small, it had big talent. The CEO, Jacob Devlin, is famous for creating BERT, a powerful language model that helps machines understand human language better. BERT became a key part of many systems at Google, including its search engine.

Windsurf was known for creating smart tools that could help computers read and write more like humans. They worked on large language models, the kind of technology that powers chatbots, translation tools, and voice assistants.

Because of their strong research and ideas, the Windsurf team quickly became well respected in the AI world.

Why Did Google Hire the Windsurf Team?
Google is in a race with other big tech companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta to create the best AI models. These companies are all working hard to build AI systems that are smarter, faster, and more useful for people around the world.

To stay in the lead, Google needs top minds and new ideas. By hiring the team from Windsurf, Google hopes to improve its own models, especially those that power chatbots, search tools, and other AI features.

This move is not just about hiring workers — it’s about bringing in new knowledge, fresh thinking, and proven talent.

Who Is Jacob Devlin?
Jacob Devlin is a well-known name in the AI world. Before starting Windsurf, he worked at Google, where he helped build BERT — short for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.

BERT was a big breakthrough. It helped machines understand the meaning of words in context — for example, knowing the difference between “bank” (as in a riverbank) and “bank” (as in a place with money). This made search results more accurate and improved many other systems that deal with language.

After leaving Google, Devlin started Windsurf with a small group of top researchers. Now, by rejoining Google with his new team, he’s bringing even more skills and experience back to the company.

Where Will the New Team Work?
The Windsurf team will now be part of Google DeepMind, which is the company’s main center for AI research. DeepMind was once a separate company but was brought under Google’s control. It has created famous AI programs like AlphaGo, which beat world champions in the board game Go.

Now, DeepMind is focused on building large AI models that can understand and create text, code, and other types of content. With the Windsurf team joining in, DeepMind hopes to speed up its progress and beat the competition.

Google’s Bigger AI Plan
Google is trying to build the world’s most helpful and safe AI systems. One of its main products is Gemini, a series of large AI models that compete with ChatGPT by OpenAI.

Gemini has already been used in many tools, including Google’s own chatbot and Android features. But there is still a long way to go. Google wants Gemini to get better at reasoning, memory, language, and multi-step tasks — things that are hard even for smart computers.

With the new team from Windsurf, Google is hoping to upgrade Gemini and other AI products faster than before.

Competition in the AI World
The AI industry has become very competitive. Every tech company is investing billions of dollars to create smarter machines. OpenAI, for example, has become popular for building ChatGPT, which is used by millions of people every day.

Microsoft has invested heavily in OpenAI and added AI features to its products like Word, Excel, and Bing. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is also working on big AI models.

Now, companies are not only trying to build better AI, but they are also fighting for the best researchers and engineers. Hiring a skilled team like the one from Windsurf is part of this battle.

Startups Becoming Talent Pools
This is not the first time a small AI startup has joined a bigger company. In fact, many large companies now look to startups as sources of new talent.

Instead of building everything from scratch, big firms often buy or hire entire teams who are already working on cutting-edge ideas. This saves time and helps them move faster.

By hiring the full Windsurf team, Google gets a ready-made group that already knows how to work well together — a huge plus in a fast-moving field like AI.

What Happens to Windsurf?
Now that the team has joined Google, Windsurf will shut down as a company. It no longer needs to work as a separate group because all its people, skills, and ideas are moving to DeepMind.

This kind of “acqui-hiring” — where a company hires a startup’s full team instead of buying the business — has become common in the tech world.

A Step Toward the Future
Even though Windsurf’s journey as a company is ending, its work will live on inside Google. The ideas and tools they were building will now help make Google’s products smarter and more helpful.

Many people in the AI community are watching closely. They believe this new team might help Google develop AI that can handle more complex tasks, give better answers, and work across different languages and jobs.

It’s another step in the long race to build AI that can truly help people — whether that means writing emails, tutoring students, solving problems, or even creating art.

Google’s move to bring in the Windsurf team shows how serious the company is about staying at the top of the AI world. By bringing back one of its former stars, Jacob Devlin, and his team of experts, Google hopes to take a big leap forward.

In the world of AI, where things change fast, having the right people makes all the difference. This new chapter could help Google bring smarter, more useful tools to people all around the globe.