Windsurf (now Devin Desktop)
Codeium-built agentic IDE (VS Code fork); flagship was Cascade, a planning + execution agent that maintains "Flows" and "Memories" as durable artifacts. Reported acquired by OpenAI in May 2025 for ~$3B (later partly unwound; Google paid ~$2.4B for an inverse-license + key staff; the remaining IDE/IP went to Cognition in July 2025). Renamed Devin Desktop by Cognition on 2026-06-02, with Devin Local replacing Cascade as the primary local agent. The legacy Cascade agent stayed available through 2026-07-01; windsurf.com now redirects to devin.ai/desktop.
Acquired · Verified 2026-10-29 · fresh as of 2026-10-29 · 58 cited facts, 1 with a third-party source · 3 recorded changes · Suggest a correction
At a glance
- Tier
- T1
- Section
- Agent IDEs & coding harnesses
- Latest release
- not applicable — not OSS fix
- License
- not applicable — not OSS fix
- GitHub
- not applicable — no GitHub repo fix
- Pricing
- Free $0; Pro $20/mo; Max $200/mo; Teams $80/mo plus $40/mo per full seat; Enterprise custom vendor fix
- Funding
- Acquired by Cognition (2025-07-14, definitive agreement for IP, product, brand and team); prior Codeium $150M Series C (2024); ~$3B reported OpenAI offer; $2.4B Google reverse-acqui-hire (2025-07) third-party fix
- Freshness
- 2026-10-29 fix
- Layer
- agent-infra repo fix
- Licensing
- commercial vendor fix
When to use
Optimised for: Cascade Flows — long-running planning + execution agent
Anti-fit: not for non-coding tasks; post-acquisition product-direction uncertainty
Pros & cons
Pros
Cascade pioneered durable Flow + Memory artifacts in an IDE; rich enterprise on-prem story (Codeium era) makes it the only major harness with first-class self-host.
Cons
Three-way acquisition saga (OpenAI / Google / Cognition) creates roadmap uncertainty; the founding team is at Google, the product at Cognition.
Claims & capabilities
Reported OpenAI acquisition ~$3B May 2025; Google reverse-acqui-hire ~$2.4B July 2025; Cognition acquired remaining IP and IDE August 2025.
Technical surface
- API surface
- Desktop IDE; CLI
- Backend storage
- local workspace + cloud session state
- Deployment
- Cloud (desktop client) + on-prem (enterprise Codeium)
- Embedding model
- not applicable — not a memory product
- Multi-tenancy
- per-user; enterprise tenants isolated
- MCP
- yes — Cascade MCP configuration in Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf)
- A2A
- searched not found
- OpenTelemetry
- searched not found
Alternatives to Windsurf (now Devin Desktop) → live options ranked by shared design, licence, hosting and MCP support
Similar systems
Other agent ides & coding harnesses in the catalog, ranked by inbound references.
- Claude Code (Anthropic) T1
Anthropic's agentic coding tool: Claude as a coding agent in the terminal, IDEs (VS Code, JetBrains), desktop app, web/mobile, GitHub and Slack. Context via CLAUDE.md, skills, hooks, subagents and MCP servers.
- Cursor (IDE) T1
AI-first IDE that forked VS Code; Composer (multi-file edit) and Agent Mode (long-running coding agent) are its flagship surfaces. Memory layer = .cursorrules / Rules; recall via repo-aware Context Engine. Anysphere (parent) raised $900M Series C at $9.9B in May 2025; acquired by SpaceX (announced 2026-08-14, terms undisclosed), product continues under the Cursor brand.
- OpenAI Codex CLI T1
OpenAI's actively developed OSS terminal coding agent (Apr 2025), now written in Rust (codex-rs replaced the original TS CLI); also IDE extension + desktop app. Separate from the Codex Web cloud agent and the retired 2021 Codex model API. The codex mcp-server command (Codex as an MCP server) was deprecated on 2026-08-24 and removed in CLI 0.154.0 (2026-09-09); OpenAI points integrations to the experimental Codex app server, and codex mcp still connects Codex to external MCP servers.
- Opencode (SST) T2
SST team's open-source terminal coding agent — TypeScript, multi-model, MCP-native. Released 2025; explicitly positioned as a permissively-licensed Claude Code alternative. Memory via AGENTS.md (the emerging cross-harness convention).
- Bedrock AgentCore (AWS) T2
AWS Bedrock AgentCore — managed runtime to deploy + scale + observe agents. Multi-component: Runtime, Identity, Memory, Gateway, Browser, Code Interpreter, Observability. Distinct from Bedrock Agents (older fixed-config product); AgentCore is the 2025 framework-agnostic runtime for any agent (LangGraph, CrewAI, Strands, OpenAI Agents SDK).
- GitHub Copilot (Agent Mode) T1
The original AI coding assistant (Copilot in editor; 2021). 2025 evolved into a full agentic surface: chat, completions, Agent Mode (multi-step), and Copilot Workspace. Backed by Microsoft. Distinct row from Workspace — this row covers the everyday in-editor + agent mode product, Workspace covers the hosted spec-driven workflow.
Sources (57 cited facts, 1 third-party)
Each fact links to the page it came from; the badge says who published it (how to read sources).
- What it is Agentic IDE — Cascade Flow + Memories (acquired by OpenAI 2025) vendor
- What it does & what's distinct Codeium-built agentic IDE (VS Code fork); flagship was Cascade, a planning + execution a… vendor
- Claims / benefits Reported OpenAI acquisition ~$3B May 2025; Google reverse-acqui-hire ~$2.4B July 2025; C… vendor
- Modalities text vendor
- Created 2024-11 vendor
- Mindshare 20+ HN threads on the launch and acquisitions; trade-press coverage vendor
- Funding Acquired by Cognition (2025-07-14, definitive agreement for IP, product, brand and team)… third-party
- Customers / scale Codeium claimed 1M+ devs pre-acquisition; named enterprise users include Dell, JPMorgan-… vendor
- Pricing Free $0; Pro $20/mo; Max $200/mo; Teams $80/mo plus $40/mo per full seat; Enterprise cus… vendor
- Compliance SOC 2 Type II (Codeium-era) vendor
- Data handling Enterprise data isolation; opt-out of training vendor
- Deployment Cloud (desktop client) + on-prem (enterprise Codeium) vendor
- HQ US (Mountain View, CA; Exafunction → Codeium → Windsurf) vendor
- Founders / pedigree Codeium — Varun Mohan (CEO; ex-Exafunction), Douglas Chen, Anshul Ramachandran (MIT). Mo… vendor
- Memory volume / scale no scale claim vendor
- API surface Desktop IDE; CLI vendor
- Backend storage local workspace + cloud session state vendor
- Multi-tenancy per-user; enterprise tenants isolated vendor
- Encryption TLS in transit; AES-256 at rest vendor
- SSO / RBAC SSO + RBAC (Teams/Enterprise) vendor
- Versioning rules/memories are file-backed vendor
- Schema evolution free-form / no schema vendor
- Namespace primitives per-workspace vendor
- Contradiction handling LLM resolves and overwrites (Cascade) vendor
- MCP support yes — Cascade MCP configuration in Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf) vendor
- Import / export Memories file-backed vendor
- Validated verticals coding agents only — broad horizontal vendor
- Time to running <10min vendor
- Anti-fit not for non-coding tasks; post-acquisition product-direction uncertainty vendor
- Optimised for Cascade Flows — long-running planning + execution agent vendor
- Adjacent infrastructure Anthropic Claude + OpenAI + Codeium-own models vendor
- Pros Cascade pioneered durable Flow + Memory artifacts in an IDE; rich enterprise on-prem sto… vendor
- Cons Three-way acquisition saga (OpenAI / Google / Cognition) creates roadmap uncertainty; th… vendor
- Project & sources windsurf.com; Bloomberg Mar 2025 OpenAI report; Cognition Aug 2025 acquisition blog vendor
- cost-token-budget no vendor
- cost-prompt-caching yes vendor
- cost-semantic-caching no vendor
- cost-batching no vendor
- cost-model-routing yes vendor
- cost-streaming-only no vendor
- cost-observability-cost-attribution yes vendor
- eval-langsmith-evals no vendor
- eval-braintrust no vendor
- eval-weights-and-biases-agent no vendor
- eval-helicone-evals no vendor
- eval-custom-test-harness no vendor
- eval-human-loop no vendor
- eval-production-traffic-replay no vendor
- cost-input-usd-per-mtok 0 vendor
- cost-output-usd-per-mtok 0 vendor
- cost-tier free vendor
- cost-pricing-model free-tier vendor
- cost-last-verified 2026-06-29 vendor
- architecture-deployment-locus ide vendor
- licensing-bucket commercial vendor
- positioning-platform-vs-product product vendor
- taxonomy-three-layer-rollup agent-infra repo
What changed
Changes to this record's lifecycle, licence, release, pricing and hosting facts, from the catalog's git history. Subscribe (Atom)
- 2026-10-29
- Funding / ownership “Codeium $150M Series C (2024); ~$3B reported OpenAI offer; ultimately $2.4B Google reverse-acqui-hire (2025-07)” → “Acquired by Cognition (2025-07-14, definitive agreement for IP, product, brand and team); prior Codeium $150M Series C (2024); ~$3B reported OpenAI offer; $2.4B Google reverse-acqui-hire (2025-07)” source
- 2026-10-29
- Homepage “https://windsurf.com” → “https://devin.ai/desktop”
- 2026-10-27
- Name “Windsurf (Codeium / OpenAI)” → “Windsurf (now Devin Desktop)”
- Pricing “Free + paid” → “Free $0; Pro $20/mo; Max $200/mo; Teams $80/mo plus $40/mo per full seat; Enterprise custom” source
- MCP support “native — Windsurf supports MCP” → “yes — Cascade MCP configuration in Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf)” source
Related systems
References (2)
- Anthropic Claude (foundation models) depends on at runtime — adjacent-infrastructure cell: Anthropic Claude + OpenAI + Codeium-own models
- OpenAI GPT family (GPT-5 / GPT-4o / o3 / o4) depends on at runtime — adjacent-infrastructure cell: Anthropic Claude + OpenAI + Codeium-own models
Referenced by (2)
- Braintrust integrates with — Braintrust docs have a Windsurf integration page. (verified 2026-10-29)
- Cloudflare MCP server portals integrates with — Cloudflare MCP server portals docs: the portal page gives per-client connection instructions for Windsurf. (verified 2026-10-29)