How Windsurf turned its AI coding brand into something cool enough to wear

Following the reports of a $3 billion acquisition by OpenAI, Windsurf is showing off a new logo courtesy of Metalab.

​​Anshul Ramachandran knew they’d landed on something special when engineers started having opinions about color palettes. “Probably one of my favorite moments was when we showed other people at the company the brand book for the first time and I heard the audible ‘wows’ and ‘ahs,’” the head of product and strategy at Windsurf says. “If you can get a bunch of engineers in a room to do that about colors and lines, you probably did something that works.”

Windsurf, formerly known as Codeium, is an AI-based development environment reportedly bought last month by Open AI for $3 billion—30 times its valuation. Ramachandran’s clients are mainly engineers, and so any redesign needed to speak directly to them. So Windsurf enlisted Vancouver design agency Metalab to create a visual identity that looks more like athletic gear than business software. The result breaks every rule about how tech companies are supposed to look.