Varun Mohan is the co-founder and CEO of Windsurf, an AI-driven software development startup based in Mountain View, California. Born and raised in Sunnyvale, California, to Indian immigrant parents, Mohan attended The Harker School before earning both a Bachelor’s and Master of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His academic focus included operating systems, distributed computing, machine learning, and algorithms. Before founding Windsurf in June 2021 with Douglas Chen, a longtime friend and MIT classmate, Mohan gained significant industry experience through internships at companies like Quora, LinkedIn, Samsung, and Databricks. After graduation, he worked at Nuro, an autonomous vehicle startup, where he advanced from software engineer to tech lead manager overseeing autonomy infrastructure. Under Mohan’s leadership, Windsurf rapidly emerged as a leading AI-powered integrated development environment (IDE), designed to streamline coding workflows by enabling developers to write, test, and refactor code via natural language commands. The company pivoted from earlier products to focus on this AI-native development environment, achieving over one million users within months and raising around $240 million in funding, reaching a valuation of $1.25 billion. Windsurf’s innovative technology and market traction led to its inclusion in Forbes’ AI 50 lists for 2024 and 2025. By 2025, Windsurf expanded its enterprise customer base significantly, securing contracts with firms like JPMorgan Chase, Dell, and Zillow, and achieving $100 million in annual recurring revenue with exceptional customer retention metrics. The company also became the first AI coding assistant to earn FedRAMP High authorization, enabling secure use in federal and regulated environments. Windsurf employs approximately 160 people, including a large engineering and sales team, reflecting its rapid growth and industry relevance. Mohan and his co-founder joined Google in 2024 as part of a strategic acquisition to bolster Google’s AI capabilities[1][2][3][4][7].