While technology giants are burning cash to establish their supremacy over artificial intelligence, 28-year-old Varun Mohan is capitalizing on it. He chose to be with Google for his next milestone in the hard-edged competition among Alphabet Inc., Facebook Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI. Global netizens are wondering why Alphabet Inc’s CEO Sundar Pichai and OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman betted billions of dollars on Indian American Varun Mohan, who turned down OpenAI’s whopping $3bn offer for less – a $2.4 billion deal from Google.

Varun Mohan’s deal with Google catapulted him and his partner Douglas Chen on the threshold of the elite club of Indian American billionaires. Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Raj Sardana, and Nikesh Arora are the new members of this club, according to Forbes’ 2025 list of richest immigrants.

Who is Indian American Varun Mohan?

Varun Mohan is CEO and co-founder of Windsurf, an AI coding startup. Born to Indian immigrant parents in Sunnyvale, California, he was raised in a household shaped by Indian values and driven by American Dream. From a young age, Varun was drawn to technology and problem-solving. At The Harker School in San Jose, he stood out for his exceptional talent in math and computing, which earned him the moniker – a math prodigy. As an Olympiad achiever in math and computing, he developed a deeply analytical bent of mind that laid the foundation for his success as a tech entrepreneur in America.

Varun Mohan’s educational qualifications include both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from MIT University in Massachusetts. He earned a dual degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, a tough combination that few meritorious students choose to pursue. At MIT, Mohan specialized in operating systems, distributed computing, machine learning, performance engineering, and algorithms.

Varun Mohan’s Career Journey from an Intern to CEO

Before launching the coding startup Windsurf, Varun Mohan built a strong professional foundation by working with some of the most respected tech companies in the world. During his time at MIT, he interned at Quora, LinkedIn, Samsung, Cloudian, and Databricks, gaining hands-on experience in machine learning systems, cloud storage, and data infrastructure. After graduation, he joined the self-driving car startup Nuro, where he rose to the rank of Lead Software Engineer.

In 2021, Varun co-founded Windsurf with Douglas Chen, his batchmate at MIT. As the CEO of Windsurf, he introduced Cascade, an AI-native development environment where engineers could write, test, and refactor code simply by speaking to their systems. Within months, over a million developers adopted it. The company raised around $240 million in funding and reached a valuation of $1.25 billion, making it one of the fastest-growing AI startups in the US Silicon Valley. A few months ago, Forbes named Windsurf as one of the top 50 AI companies in the world.

Why Varun Mohan Rejected OpenAI’s $3bn Offer for Google

It is said that the AI technology that Varun Mohan and his team at Windsurf built triggered Google DeepMind vs OpenAI. Varun was close to signing OpenAI’s $3-billion offer for Windsurf, but things fell apart when Microsoft, OpenAI’s biggest investor, raised concerns over potential conflicts with its own product, GitHub Copilot. The disagreement stopped the deal halfway. Instead, he chose Google where he won’t lose his ownership as CEO of Windsurf. Precisely, Windsurf continues to run as an independent company and sell its technology to other clients.

Is 17-year-old Pranjali Awasthi the next Varun Mohan? She is the founder and CEO of Delv.AI, a disruptive startup for the online search landscape dominated by Google.

The $2.4 billion deal with Google DeepMind is not a full acquisition of Windsurf by Alphabet. Rather, it is a licensing and talent deal that gives Google non-exclusive rights to key Windsurf technologies without taking ownership of the company. Under the deal, he, along with his business partner and selected talents from the R&D team have joined Google DeepMind, Alphabet Inc.’s dedicated AI research division, to advance agentic coding projects and integrate their tools into Gemini.

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Four decades after Rakesh Sharma’s historic 1984 spaceflight, India is all set to make a grand comeback to human spaceflight with Captain Shubhanshu Shukla as a pilot of Axiom Space’s Ax-4 Mission scheduled on May 29, 2025. The Ax-4 Mission, as long as 14 to 21 days, aboard the International Space Station (ISS) is a collaboration between Axiom Space, NASA, and ISRO. Making the human spaceflight mission a lot more special for India’s future is not only Shubhanshu Shukla from the Indian Air Force, but also Indian American Tejpaul Bhatia, the newly appointed CEO of Axiom Space.

Axiom Space, headquartered in Houston, specializes in building and operating a commercial space station for human spaceflights as a leading space infrastructure developer. Most recently, Axiom Space passed the ‘CEO’ baton to Indian-origin Tejpaul Bhatia, who joined the company as Chief Revenue Officer in 2021. His appointment as CEO of Axiom Space with a valuation of US$2 billion came at a pivotal moment, as both ISRO and NASA teamed with Axiom to send four astronauts to the International Space Mission, including Shubhanshu Shukla.

In a statement, Bhatia expressed his long-standing passion for space exploration: “I’ve been inspired by space exploration since childhood, and leading Axiom Space at this critical inflection point in human spaceflight is the realization of a lifelong ambition.” With Bhatia at the helm, Axiom Space is aiming even higher. The company’s big goal is to build Axiom Station, the world’s first fully commercial human space station, and to attach its first module to the ISS by 2027.

Born to Indian immigrant parents in New York, Tejpaul Bhatia, as Axiom Space CEO, entered the elite C-suite of America where he shares space with other Indian American CEOs of major conglomerates, like Neal Mohan at YouTube, Sridhar Ramaswamy at Snowflake, and Ravi Kumar Singisetti at Cognizant, other than Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Arvind Krishnan, and Santanu Narayen. Bhatia holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Columbia University.

Since he joined Axiom Inc. from Google in 2021, he has been the instrumental in securing revenue-generating deals and contracts worth over one billion dollars in total. With his 25 years of experience, business acumen, and technology leadership, he headed four revolutionary human spaceflight missions that put Axiom Space a notch higher above other private players in commercial space ventures, while transforming commercial spaceflight into a scalable business.

Before his ‘American Dream’ career skyrocketed as CEO of Axiom Space, he played a key role in leading strategic narrative for Google Cloud to startup founders, venture capital firms, and Fortune 100 corporations. He drove Google’s narrative on the future of work through direct CXO engagements and thought leadership across industries, according to his LinkedIn profile. In May 2018, he had joined Google as the startup ecosystem manager in New York City and worked with the startup community as an ambassador of Google Cloud.

Under Bhatia’s leadership, Axiom Space is strengthening international partnerships and bridging commercial innovation with national space agencies like ISRO and NASA. His role in the Ax-4 mission underscores Indian Diaspora’s growing contributions to global science and technology. Like many Indian-Americans, Bhatia embodies this rising influence, joining the ranks of Indian-origin leaders who are helping to shape America’s future.

Other than climbing the totem pole through his professional milestones in American corporate, Axiom Space CEO Tejpaul Bhatia actively contributes to non-profit organizations, like serving in voluntary leadership roles at the Make-A-Wish Foundation. His journey from an immigrant family to the CEO of a pioneering human spaceflight company is an inspiration, embodying the possibilities that arise from perseverance and vision.

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