Inside Cognition

The people behind Devin and Windsurf, where they worked together before and the companies Cognition bought. Researched by Autumn, with a source on every fact.

Updated 2026-11-04 · 469 sources

Scott WuCo-Founder and CEOSteven HaoCo-FounderWalden YanCo-Founder & CPORussell KaplanPresidentJeff WangPresident, New EnterpriseSilas AlbertiChief Research OfficerAlex StamosChief Information Security OfficerPaul GrewalChief Legal & Global Affairs OfficerGennady KorotkevichSoftware EngineerAndrew HeHuman Software EngineerAdhyyan SekhsariaFounding EngineerSalima GhadimiOperations
666
people found, current and former
528
work there now
237
full profiles
6
companies acquired
469
sources
Explore · People666people found who work or worked at Cognition, with 237 full profiles.The people at Cognition Explore · Olympiads19IOI gold medals won by 8 people who work or worked at Cognition, and the teams they shared.Olympiad medalists at Cognition Explore · Worked together14people later at Cognition were at Scale AI in the same month, Sep 2021.Where Cognition's people worked together before Explore · Acquisitions6companies Cognition acquired, starting with Windsurf.The companies Cognition acquired Explore · Culture75quotes from Cognition's people about how they work, verbatim.Cognition's culture in its people's words
01

Timeline

From Devin's launch in Mar 2024 to Corridor joining in Oct 2026. Hover or tap a mark for the details.

202420252026CompanyProductFundingAcquisitionsPeople

Swipe sideways to see 2023 to 2026

Named on the chart Other event, details on hover Acquisition
Sources1techcrunch.com2en.wikipedia.org3cognition.com4cognition.com5theinformation.com6cognition.com7news.bloomberglaw.com8cognition.com9techcrunch.com10techcrunch.com11cognition.com12cnbc.com13cognition.com14cognition.com15cognition.com16cognition.com17edb.gov.sg18technode.global19cognition.com20cognition.com21cognition.com22cognition.com23accel.com24cognition.com25cognition.com26techcrunch.com27news.bloomberglaw.com28techcrunch.com29cognition.com30techcrunch.com31cognition.com32cognition.com33dioxuslabs.com34martech360.com35thenextweb.com36cognition.com37x.com38cognition.com
02

Before Cognition

Scott Wu, Steven Hao and Andrew He were all on the 2014 US IOI team and wrote two math papers together. 14 people who later joined Cognition were at Scale AI in Sep 2021.

20122014201620182020202220242026Scott WuCo-Founder and CEOLunchclubCognitionSteven HaoCo-FounderScale AICognitionAndrew HeHuman Software Engi…CognitionIOI 2013PaperIOI 2014PaperMIT ZERO

Swipe sideways to see 2012 to 2026

Gold Silver Paper together ICPC team Company
Sources1arxiv.org2arxiv.org3cphof.org4stats.ioinformatics.org5stats.ioinformatics.org6linkedin.com

Scale AI

At Cognition now Has left Cognition Most there at once
Sources1linkedin.com2linkedin.com3linkedin.com4linkedin.com5linkedin.com6linkedin.com7linkedin.com8linkedin.com9linkedin.com10linkedin.com11linkedin.com12linkedin.com13linkedin.com14linkedin.com15linkedin.com16linkedin.com17en.wikipedia.org18techcongress.io19congress.gov20linkedin.com21linkedin.com
Every place they overlapped before Cognition
03

Olympiad medalists

16 people who work or worked at Cognition won 45 medals at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) and the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), 25 of them gold.

19
IOI golds, 8 people
6
IMO golds, 2 people
45
medals in all
3
contest teams with three at Cognition
Sources1stats.ioinformatics.org2cphof.org3ucup.ac4autumn.ai
All the medalists and their teams
04

Acquisitions

Six companies have joined Cognition since Jul 2025, Windsurf first. 94 of the 112 people at Windsurf that month went to Cognition.

  1. WindsurfWindsurf made an AI-powered IDE; Cognition's announcement called it "the agentic IDE".94 of 112 people went to Cognition
  2. HavanaCognition's press release described Havana as a startup building AI agents; Havana's November 2025 release described an AI student recruitment platform for higher education.2 joined Cognition
  3. TierZeroTierZero makes "AI production agents that live in your stack, solve problems automatically, and get smarter with every issue they resolve."4 joined Cognition
  4. PokePoke is a personal agent that lives in your texts, per Cognition's announcement.4 joined Cognition
  5. Dioxus LabsDioxus Labs makes Dioxus, which its site calls a fullstack crossplatform app framework for Rust.3 joined Cognition
  6. CorridorForbes described Corridor's product as an AI system that watches AI and human coders and issues alerts when vulnerabilities arise as software is being written.4 joined Cognition
Sources1techcrunch.com2cognition.com3cognition.com4techcrunch.com5edb.gov.sg6technode.global7cognition.com8accel.com9cognition.com10dioxuslabs.com11cognition.com12cognition.com
The story of each deal
05

In their own words

I joined Cognition when we were ten people. My introduction to the company was a phone call in the middle of the night telling me to go to an apartment in Manhattan. The address was said once and never texted to me, so I had to remember it and hope I showed up at the right place.

Salima GhadimiGTM OperationsCognition team spotlight

One year ago I joined Cognition to train the best coding model. We were a handful of undergrad and PhD dropouts, and part of me wondered whether we could really get to the frontier without the experience.

Ben PanResearch EngineerSep 10, 2026 · X

We got rid of internal titles on the legal team at Cognition. They are orthogonal to our highly technical culture and do little to align with our mission of expanding human capacity through autonomous software engineering.

Paul GrewalChief Legal & Global Affairs OfficerOct 30, 2026 · LinkedIn
75 quotes on working at Cognition
06

How we made this

Research task Completed
Prompt

Enrich {name}, {title} at Cognition (Devin, Devin Desktop/Windsurf). Dig into what they've built or worked on at Cognition and how they got there, including any company Cognition acquired. Before Cognition, look for the specific teams, desks, labs and co-founders they worked with, and any olympiad, ICPC or training-camp history with teammates. Pull in their open source work and anything they've posted publicly about working at Cognition, quoted word for word. This is for a public page, so skip contact details.

Profiles
237
Autumn research tasks
274
Sources
469