Varun Mohan, the Indian-origin CEO of AI startup Windsurf, is facing backlash after quitting the company to join Google’s DeepMind, leaving behind a deal that could have sold the firm to OpenAI for $3 billion.
His abrupt exit, along with co-founder Douglas Chen, left Windsurf in turmoil. The startup managed to secure a last-minute acquisition by another AI firm, Cognition, after a weekfinish of frantic neobtainediations. The company’s new CEO, Jeff Wang, described the rescue as “crazy”.
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla sharply criticised Mohan, declareing he would not work with him again. “Windsurf and others are really bad examples of founders leaving their teams behind and not even sharing the proceeds,” Mr Khosla wrote on X.
Cognition CEO Scott Wu also weighed in, calling Mohan’s relocate a breach of the founder’s “unspoken covenant” to stay with the company through difficult times. On social media, Mohan was labelled by some applyrs as a “generational villain”.
A applyr commented, “Founders cashing out while the team’s left behind isn’t just bad form, it’s long term reputation damage.”
Another applyr wrote on X, “Yes. It’s very disappointing to see this. They probably figured that’s the only way to have some meaningful exit and hoped that the rest of the company would benefit from the “investment”. Unfortunately, the folks who stay behind are often the ones left holding the bag… same with Scale AI, same with Windsurf.”
“Money and power always brings greed and selfishness,” the third applyr wrote on X.
The fourth wrote, “I agree. The founder lacked cojones. You’re a top 5 company in a trillion dollar market. Go raise a large boy round and go to war. Instead you obtain intimidated and take a shitty deal to enrich yourself and screw over everyone else?”
The fifth labelled him a generational villain, “Varun Mohan is a generational villain at this point.. crazy saga. Also no word from him.”
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