# Jay Grant

![Jay Grant](/resources/cognition/portraits/jay-grant.webp)

Cognition | prev. black forest labs  
Cognition  
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

## At Cognition

- Role: Research Operations (Research)
- Joined: Jun 2026
- How they joined: Directly
- Before Cognition: Direct Preference Optimization Curator, Black Forest Labs
- Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: MIT; Harvard University (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together)

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaygrant10
- X: @jay_m_grant
- Domain: cognition.ai

## Notes
- Posted on X on 2026-09-10, word for word: "cognition is about to eat the world". (https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2097844236981055734)
- Posted on X on 2026-07-09 about Cognition's model training, word for word: "beautiful multi-cluster training of swe-1.7". (https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2075018877973721278)
- Public headline says "Cognition | prev. black forest labs". (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaygrant10)
- Posted on X on 2026-10-28, word for word: "FrontierCode 2.0 is now part of the Intelligence Index". (https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2115282242792726866)
- His 2026-10-28 post on FrontierCode 2.0 joining the Intelligence Index refers to Cognition's FrontierCode coding benchmark/leaderboard, tracked by Artificial Analysis. (https://cognition.com/frontiercode)
- Posted on X on 2026-08-07 about his former employer Black Forest Labs, word for word: "the @bfl_ai team is incredible. persistence & craft wins when others quit". (https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2085572607383044526)
- Harvard Crimson (2026-04-24) identifies him as Jay Grant '27 and reports he joined Harvard's pro-AGI student club Singularity after reading founder Jain's manifesto, quoting him: "I'm surprised so few people came." He attributed campus disinterest to fear and skepticism. (https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/24/artificial-intelligence-safety-student-groups-singularity/)
- He joined Cognition in June 2026, about a year after Cognition signed a definitive agreement (July 2025) to acquire Windsurf, the agentic IDE, including its IP, product, trademark and brand; he did not come over via the acquisition but joined the combined Devin + Windsurf company directly from Harvard. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf)
- jangranacher [at] college [dot] harvard [dot] edu; this comes from the profile summary and preserves the person's own positioning. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaygrant10)
- Posted on X on 2026-07-23, word for word: "mark my words: this will go down in history as one of the greatest moves in the race to build AGI". (https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2080322323182494179)
- Reposted Cognition's call for the Inference-Time Compute Hackathon hosted by Cognition, Mercor, Etched and Anthropic (June 2026), and replied "sign up!" to promote it. (https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2065117106962829550)
- Posted on X on 2026-05-27, word for word: "the cloud agents are taking over" (Devin is Cognition's cloud coding agent). (https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2059673991565250862)
- As a Babson student (c. Dec 2023) he commented on a Babson College AI post describing himself as "a Babson Student and founder of an AI consultancy for small to medium" businesses. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/babson-college_artificialintelligence-ai-activity-7136372364828676096-Mjjs)
- Previous roles include Research Operations at Cognition; Direct Preference Optimization Curator at Black Forest Labs; Co-founder at wAIve. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaygrant10)
- Reposted a Sept 2026 celebration of Cognition colleague Silas Alberti, and earlier (2026-09-08) Alberti's post "Back to work! But with more compute". (https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2102075853945323958)
- Reposted Colossus magazine's profile of Cognition co-founder Scott Wu, described as "one of the fastest-growing companies in history" and "the greatest compet[itive programmer]". (https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2054006768393462205)
- TechCrunch: Cognition bought Windsurf days after Google DeepMind hired Windsurf's CEO and research leaders, and months after OpenAI offered to buy it - the context for the Windsurf/Devin Desktop product line he now works around. (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/)
- X bio reads "@cognition | prev. @bfl_ai, @harvard, uwc atlantic"; account created 2024-02, 375 followers. (https://x.com/jay_m_grant)
- Location is Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaygrant10)
- Posted on X on 2026-07-13, word for word: "fable + sidekick is ridiculously good". (https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2076736965224083628)
- Replied with a fire emoji to Cognition's 2026-06-01 announcement of a one-day SF hackathon with Mercor, Etched and Anthropic ($50k top prize). (https://x.com/cognition/status/2061549391253536801)

## Experience
- Executive Business Partner at Cognition (Oct 2026 - Present): chief research office
- Research Operations at Cognition (Jun 2026 - Sep 2026)
- Direct Preference Optimization Curator at Black Forest Labs (Sep 2024 - Aug 2025): early days • first intern
- Co-founder at wAIve (Mar 2023 - Jul 2024)

## Education
- Harvard University - Economics and Computer Science - (Jul 2025 - May 2026)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology - (Sep 2025 - Dec 2025): Cross-Registration
- Babson College - Economics - (Sep 2023 - May 2025)

## Sources
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaygrant10
- https://x.com/jay_m_grant
- https://x.com/cognition/status/2061549391253536801
- https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf
- https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/babson-college_artificialintelligence-ai-activity-7136372364828676096-Mjjs
- https://cognition.com/frontiercode
- https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/24/artificial-intelligence-safety-student-groups-singularity/
- https://github.com/jaygrant
- https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2097844236981055734
- https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2075018877973721278
- https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2115282242792726866
- https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2085572607383044526
- https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2080322323182494179
- https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2065117106962829550
- https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2059673991565250862
- https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2102075853945323958
- https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2054006768393462205
- https://x.com/jay_m_grant/status/2076736965224083628


Researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-04. Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people/jay-grant · Everyone at Cognition: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people