Windsurf (Codeium)

About Windsurf (Codeium)

Codeium was founded in 2021 and initially offered AI code completion as a free alternative to GitHub Copilot, rapidly gaining adoption due to its generous free tier and broad IDE support. In 2024, the company launched Windsurf—a full AI-native IDE built on VS Code—introducing the concept of 'agentic' AI coding that moves beyond single-line autocomplete to understanding and acting on entire codebases. Windsurf's Cascade system is the centrepiece of the agentic coding experience. Rather than completing code snippet by snippet, Cascade maintains awareness of the developer's codebase, recent edits, and stated objectives, and can autonomously plan and execute multi-step changes—creating files, running tests, fixing errors, and iterating—with the developer reviewing and approving at key decision points. This represents a meaningful shift in how AI integrates into software development workflows. The Codeium standalone extensions (available for VS Code, JetBrains, Vim, and others) provide AI autocomplete, chat, and command capabilities in existing IDEs, making Codeium's technology accessible without switching editors. Enterprise deployments support self-hosted options. For European businesses with GDPR considerations, Codeium is a US company (California) with US-based cloud infrastructure for the hosted product. Enterprise plans include data processing agreements and stronger controls, including options for on-premise or private cloud deployment of the enterprise model serving infrastructure. For regulated EU industries where source code is considered sensitive IP or may contain personal data, the enterprise self-hosted option is the appropriate procurement path.