From intern to ₹2,00,00,00,00,000: How a 28-yr-old techie who interned for 4 years triggered a Google-OpenAI war
Varun Mohan
, has signed a ₹20,400 crore ($2.4 billion) deal with
Google DeepMind
after rejecting
OpenAI
's ₹25,500 crore ($3 billion) offer. The deal sparked a fresh wave of rivalry between the two AI giants and has placed Mohan among the richest immigrant entrepreneurs in the US.
Four years of internships built the foundation
Varun Mohan, born to Indian immigrants in Sunnyvale, California, interned at eight companies -- Quora, LinkedIn, Samsung, Cloudian, and Databricks -- while studying at MIT. These four years of hands-on experience in machine learning, cloud systems, and infrastructure helped him build a strong technical base before he entered the startup space.
After graduation, he joined the autonomous vehicle startup Nuro, where he rose to the position of Lead Software Engineer.
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Windsurf and the making of Cascade
In 2021, Varun Mohan co-founded Windsurf with his MIT batchmate Douglas Chen. Their company launched Cascade, an AI-native coding platform that allows developers to write and test code by simply speaking to the system.
Cascade gained rapid adoption, with over a million developers using it within months. Windsurf raised $240 million and reached a valuation of $1.25 billion. It was later named among Forbes' top 50 AI companies globally.
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Why Google and OpenAI engaged into an acqusition war?
Google and OpenAI were both interested in acquiring Varun Mohan's startup, Windsurf, because of its breakthrough product, Cascade—an AI-native coding environment that allows developers to write, test, and refactor code using natural language. The tool had gained rapid adoption among developers and posed a potential shift in how software is built, making it a strategic asset in the race for dominance in agentic coding and AI-assisted development.
Why OpenAI's ₹25,500 crore offer failed
OpenAI was close to acquiring Windsurf for $3 billion. However, its primary investor, Microsoft, raised concerns over possible overlaps with GitHub Copilot. As a result, the deal stalled midway.
Varun Mohan then accepted Google's $2.4 billion offer. The agreement is not an acquisition. It is a licensing and talent deal, which gives Google DeepMind non-exclusive rights to key Windsurf technologies. Windsurf continues to function as an independent company and can license its tools to other clients.
Under the deal, Mohan, Chen, and a select group from Windsurf's R&D team have joined Google DeepMind to work on agentic coding projects and integrate their systems with Google's Gemini platform.
Now among America's top immigrant tech entrepreneurs
Following the deal, Forbes added Varun Mohan and Douglas Chen to its 2025 list of richest immigrants. They join a group that includes Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Raj Sardana, and Nikesh Arora.
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