OpenAI is widely believed to have acquired coding agent Windsurf over a month ago, but no formal announcement has yet been forthcoming from either of the companies. A new report sheds some light on why this might be the case.
OpenAI hasn’t formally announced its acquisition of Windsurf because it hasn’t agreed with Microsoft over the terms of the acquisition, WSJ reports. “OpenAl and Microsoft are at a standoff over the terms of the startup’s $3 billion acquisition of the coding startup Windsurf,” the report says. “Microsoft currently has access to all of OpenAI’s IP, according to their agreement. It offers its own AI coding product, GitHub Copilot, that competes with OpenAI. OpenAI doesn’t want Microsoft to have access to Windsurf’s intellectual property,” the report added.
It had been widely reported a few weeks ago that Windsurf had been acquired by OpenAI for $3 billion. Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan had even teased a big announcement on X, but had ended up announcing a new feature when people were expecting the announcement of the acquisition. Similarly, OpenAI hasn’t formally announced the acquisition through any medium.
But that hasn’t stopped other companies from acting as though the acquisition has already taken place. Anthropic had cut off access to its models to Windsurf, forcing the company to scramble and look for alternatives. It had appeared that Anthropic didn’t want its coding models to be used by a company owned by OpenAI, and give away details of their usage patterns to a competitor in the AI race.
But the fact that OpenAI doesn’t seem to want Microsoft to have access to the companies it acquires — and negotiations are taking weeks to resolve — could indicate trouble in the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership. Microsoft owns 49 percent of OpenAI through a complex structure, and runs much of its compute on its Azure systems. But in recent times, OpenAI has looked to chart a path independent from Microsoft, and has ambitions to reach AGI on its own. And with disagreements with Microsoft reportedly stalling normal business function at the company, tensions between the two partners might be about to reach boiling point.