Bengaluru, India – Varun Mohan, the Indian-origin CEO of the AI startup Windsurf, is currently at the centre of a storm of criticism for his decision to join Google DeepMind. This move comes after a reported $3 billion acquisition deal to sell Windsurf to OpenAI fell through, leaving the rest of the company in a precarious position.
Mohan and co-founder Douglas Chen were reportedly hired by Google DeepMind, an act that has been widely perceived as “abandoning” the startup and its employees. In the chaotic wake of their departure, Windsurf’s remaining leadership scrambled to secure a last-minute deal with another AI startup, Cognition, a move that new Windsurf CEO Jeff Wang reportedly called “crazy.”
The swift exit has drawn sharp condemnation from various corners of the tech industry, particularly from prominent figures like venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. Khosla took to X (formerly Twitter) to express his disapproval, stating, “Windsurf and others are really bad examples of founders leaving their teams behind and not even sharing the proceeds with their team. I definitely would not work with their founders next time.”
Khosla’s comments were in response to critical remarks made by Scott Wu, the CEO of Cognition. Wu emphasized an “unspoken covenant” among founders: “There’s an unspoken covenant that as a founder, you go down with the ship. For better or worse, it’s changed a bit over the last year and I think it’s disappointing, to be honest.”
On social media, many users have echoed these sentiments, labeling Mohan a “generational villain” and questioning his ethics. Comments range from “Varun Mohan is a generational villain at this point.. crazy saga. Also no word from him,” to a more pointed “Varun Mohan saw those 0’s $ said ‘F* them employees’.”**
Alex Kehr, CEO of Superlocal (recently acquired by Foursquare), also weighed in on the broader issue of founders departing without ensuring a “comfortable landing” for their teams. “It’s really wildly bad behavior. One of my biggest motivations to get to the finish line this year was making sure everyone on my team had a comfortable landing – particularly our iOS engineer who was about to have a child,” Kehr shared.
Another social media user succinctly summarized the widespread sentiment: “Founders cashing out while the team’s left behind isn’t just bad form, it’s long term reputation damage.”
Neither Varun Mohan nor Google has yet issued a public statement addressing the growing backlash. Windsurf, known for its AI-powered code editor and developer productivity tools, had rapidly gained traction, previously raising significant funding and being valued at over $1 billion.