Youtuber, podcaster and hardcore fan Paul van Bellen was the first to stumble upon our sport appearing in the US business magazine Forbes: "OpenAI Reportedly Strikes $3 Billion Deal To Buy Windsurf" was the headline on 6 May, of which Paul posted a screenshot on Instagram. Excuse me? The windsurfing industry is certainly exciting, but for Forbes, our few boards and sails are rather small stuff. Especially as such sums were probably not even achievable in the boom times, even Hoyle Schweitzer didn't manage that.
So what is this news all about? In this case, Windsurf is the name of a US tech company that develops AI tools for programmers and - according to the news - is to be acquired by AI pioneer OpenAI. The company had only changed its name from "Codeium" to "Windsurf" in April 2025 after the AI editor launched in November 2024 was a complete success under this name. "It wasn’t just another product release," says the company's website. "It was a turning point, uniquely redefining who we are as a company and what we could really bring to developers everywhere."
What is Windsurf AI and why does it have this name?
But what exactly is behind this term and why is the AI technology called "Windsurf"? The company writes about the name in a press release: "Windsurfing perfectly captures the combination of human, machine, and nature in an activity that looks effortless, but takes an intense amount of power." Whether there are any active windsurfers in the company itself has not yet been revealed in response to our enquiry.
Windsurfing perfectly captures the combination of human, machine, and nature in an activity that looks effortless, but takes an intense amount of power."
And what does Windsurf AI do? A little research (with AI support, of course) reveals: "Windsurf AI is a modern, AI-powered development environment (IDE) that aims to support software developers through intelligent automation and collaboration with AI agents. Windsurf AI provides an integrated development environment specifically designed for human-AI collaboration. The platform utilises so-called 'flows', which combine the functions of an AI co-pilot with those of an autonomous agent. This enables the AI not only to make suggestions, but also to take on complex tasks independently, such as correcting errors or optimising sections of code.
A key feature of Windsurf is Cascade, an AI agent that has a deep understanding of the entire code base and responds to developer actions in real time. Cascade can suggest and execute commands as well as detect and fix problems, enabling a seamless and efficient development process."
