Sam Altman’s OpenAI In Talks To Buy AI Coding Tool Windsurf For $3 Billion

Sam Altman’s OpenAI is in talks to acquire Windsurf, an AI coding tool for developers and enterprises, for roughly $3 billion, Bloomberg News reported, citing a source familiar with the development.

If a deal with Windsurf is reached, it would be OpenAI’s largest acquisition to date. The ChatGPT maker has previously completed a number of smaller transactions, including the acquisition of video collaboration platform Multi and analytics database provider Rockset in June of last year.

Windsurf—earlier known as Codeium—is one of the tools alongside Cursor and Replit that developers have been recently using to “vibe code,” a term for swiftly generating code for new software through AI models. Notably, Microsoft earlier in April unveiled a similar Agent Mode feature in its Visual Studio Code, which is popular among developers, enabling multi-step coding tasks with user commands.

The popularity of chatbots and advanced AI agents has spurred growth in the generative AI space, and OpenAI is looking to lead even as rivals like Google, Elon Musk’s xAI, and Anthropic are making significant investments and releasing new products. The acquisition of Windsurf could help OpenAI to build upon ChatGPT’s coding tools.

OpenAI, too, has been releasing AI models regularly, the most recent ones being o3 and o4-mini. The o3 model can solve complex problems related to math, science, and coding even though it takes more time for computing, while o4-mini is a more compact model. According to the company, these models are capable of web browsing, image generation and analysis, and even “thinking with images” by integrating visual cues into reasoning. This implies they can process even blurry images and even zoom in on or rotate them if required.

In the area of funding too, OpenAI is taking giant steps. End of March, the company said it closed the biggest private tech funding round ever, at $40 billion. Including the new funding, the valuation of OpenAI reached $300 billion, reportedly only behind SpaceX at $350 billion.

Windsurf, whose investors include Founders Fund, Greenoaks, General Catalyst, and Kleiner Perkins, reportedly sought $2.85 billion in funding in February.

The terms of the OpenAI-Windsurf potential deal haven’t been disclosed, and the Bloomberg source said the talks may change or even fall apart.