# Moritz Stephan

![Moritz Stephan](/resources/cognition/portraits/moritz-stephan.webp)

Co-founder & CEO of Hone; ex-Cognition (Devin harness engineer, chief of staff to Scott Wu)  
Hone  
Stanford, California, United States

## At Cognition

- Role: Former Human Software Engineer (Engineering)
- Joined: Apr 2024
- How they joined: Directly
- Before Cognition: Research Engineer, Trunk Tools, Inc.
- Now: Hone (https://www.linkedin.com/in/moritz-stephan)
- Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: Stanford University (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together)

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moritz-stephan
- X: @moritz_stephan
- GitHub: https://github.com/austrian-code-wizard
- Domain: hone.com

## Notes
- Moritz Stephan is the Austrian co-founder and CEO of Hone, a San Francisco AI startup building 'Engines' - persistent agents assigned to own a business outcome over weeks or months rather than a single task. (https://www.trendingtopics.eu/hone-moritz-stephan-60-million/)
- At Cognition he was part of a small team of 'brain engineers' who built the core of Devin and owned the planning-and-execution harness at the heart of Devin, per Index Ventures' investment post. (https://www.indexventures.com/perspectives/ai-that-owns-business-outcomes-our-investment-in-hone/)
- He spent about two years at Cognition building the Devin planning-and-execution harness before becoming chief of staff to Scott Wu, then left in August 2026 to start Hone. (https://schneida.substack.com/p/a-60m-seed-priced-like-a-series-b)
- Index Ventures says he was among the first engineers to identify and push for Cognition's move into enterprise, and colleagues joked, only half-joking, that Cognition needed 'five more Moritzes'. (https://www.indexventures.com/perspectives/ai-that-owns-business-outcomes-our-investment-in-hone/)
- CEO Scott Wu tapped him to serve as Chief of Staff, where he oversaw everything from company strategy to hiring to product decisions. (https://www.indexventures.com/perspectives/ai-that-owns-business-outcomes-our-investment-in-hone/)
- Hone co-founders: Oliver Brady (early engineer at Harvey, then built and led Mercor's enterprise effort) and Carlo Kobe (Thiel Fellow who left Harvard to co-found Fizz with Moritz in 2021). (https://www.indexventures.com/perspectives/ai-that-owns-business-outcomes-our-investment-in-hone/)
- Bloomberg quotes him as Hone CEO: 'What we are doing is building AI that owns outcomes', describing deploying engines that 'look at what a team does, its goals and responsibilities, and deploy engines to own these'. (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-08/former-openai-cognition-staffers-want-ai-to-help-run-a-business)
- Launched Hone on Aug 12, 2026, thanking 'Scott Wu, Steven Hao, Walden Yan, Russell Kaplan, and all other friends at Cognition for the incredible journey and everything you taught me.' (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/moritz-stephan_we-are-launching-hone-today-over-the-last-activity-7493340969833205761-2rKi)
- Joined Cognition in March 2024 around Devin's public launch, posting on LinkedIn: 'Devin is the best agent out there by an order of magnitude & I can't wait to see it used widely in the real world. Huge kudos to the Cognition team' and 'Couldn't be more excited to join the team'. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/moritz-stephan_devin-is-the-best-agent-out-there-by-an-order-activity-7173406443201523713-l_52)
- Current role is Co-Founder at Hone. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/moritz-stephan)
- Hone's first named users are Cognition and Modal. (https://www.trendingtopics.eu/hone-moritz-stephan-60-million/)
- Co-founded Fizz, the anonymous campus social app, at Stanford with Carlo Kobe in 2021; it went through Y Combinator (S21). Moritz returned to Stanford to finish his degree while Carlo led Fizz for several years. (https://www.indexventures.com/perspectives/ai-that-owns-business-outcomes-our-investment-in-hone/)
- Andrew Gao posted 'I'm coming for Moritz Stephan's first place', referring to Cognition's internal leaderboard of top Devin users - Moritz topped it. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andrewgao22_im-coming-for-moritz-stephans-first-place-activity-7340448107916103681-ozCQ)
- At Stanford he did agent research in Chelsea Finn's lab (SAIL), first-authoring 'RLVF: Learning from Verbal Feedback without Overgeneralization' (ICML 2024) with Alexander Khazatsky, Eric Mitchell, Annie S Chen, Sheryl Hsu and Archit Sharma. (https://github.com/austrian-code-wizard)
- Co-first author with Evan Zheran Liu of 'Giving Feedback on Interactive Programs with Meta-Exploration' (NeurIPS 2022 oral), with Allen Nie, Emma Brunskill, Chris Piech and Chelsea Finn; code is at github.com/ezliu/dreamgrader. (https://ezliu.github.io/)
- He co-founded Team Tumbleweed with Julian Rothenbuchner, a wind-driven Mars rover project whose prototype was tested in Austrian Space Forum analog missions and grew to 60+ people in 4 countries. (https://www.trendingtopics.eu/hone-moritz-stephan-60-million/)
- Public headline says "building Hone". (https://www.linkedin.com/in/moritz-stephan)
- Worked as a research engineer at Trunk Tools, the New York construction-tech startup founded by Austrian entrepreneur Sarah Buchner (2022-2023). (https://www.trendingtopics.eu/hone-moritz-stephan-60-million/)
- GitHub account austrian-code-wizard (Stanford University, Palo Alto) pins c3po (code for the RLVF paper, 31 stars) and is a member of the team-tumbleweed organization. (https://github.com/austrian-code-wizard)
- Previous roles include Co-Founder at Hone; Human Software Engineer at Cognition; Undergraduate Research Assistant at Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL); Research Engineer at Trunk Tools, Inc.; Co-Founder & Advisor at Fizz (YC S21); Co-Founder at Team Tumbleweed; Software Developer (Military Service) at Österreichisches Bundesheer (Austrian Armed Forces). (https://www.linkedin.com/in/moritz-stephan)
- Education history includes Master of Science - MS, Computer Science (AI), Stanford University; Bachelor of Science - B.S., Computer Science (Theory), Stanford University; S21, Y Combinator; The Masters School; Sir Karl Popper Schule. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/moritz-stephan)
- Location is Stanford, California, United States. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/moritz-stephan)

## Experience
- Co-Founder at Hone (May 2026 - Present)
- Human Software Engineer at Cognition (Apr 2024 - May 2026): helped build Devin
- Undergraduate Research Assistant at Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) (Sep 2021 - Jun 2024): Working under Chelsea Finn.

- Developed a method to fine-tune LLMs using a single sentence of feedback. First author, ICML '24: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.10893
- Applied Meta-RL to automatically grade students' coding submissions. Co-first-author, NeurIPS '22 (oral): https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.08802
- Research Engineer at Trunk Tools, Inc. (Sep 2022 - Dec 2023): Trunk Tools solves the skilled labor shortage by enabling project leaders to increase workforce productivity, safety and profitability by aligning incentives from top to bottom, encouraging efficiency and positively motivating the workforce.
- Co-Founder & Advisor at Fizz (YC S21) (Jun 2021 - Dec 2023): Building the financial ally for young adults.
- Co-Founder at Team Tumbleweed (Nov 2016 - Aug 2020): Space tech startup (+60 people in 4 countries)
-
Creating a wind-driven Mars rover to enable human exploration through superior surface data
- Software Developer (Military Service) at Österreichisches Bundesheer (Austrian Armed Forces) (Sep 2018 - Feb 2019)

## Education
- Stanford University - Master of Science - MS, Computer Science (AI) - (Jan 2023 - Dec 2024)
- Stanford University - Bachelor of Science - B.S., Computer Science (Theory) - (Jan 2019 - Dec 2024)
- Y Combinator - S21
- The Masters School - (Jan 2015 - Dec 2016)
- Sir Karl Popper Schule - (Jan 2014 - Dec 2018)

## Sources
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/moritz-stephan
- https://www.trendingtopics.eu/hone-moritz-stephan-60-million/
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-08/former-openai-cognition-staffers-want-ai-to-help-run-a-business
- https://www.indexventures.com/perspectives/ai-that-owns-business-outcomes-our-investment-in-hone/
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/moritz-stephan_we-are-launching-hone-today-over-the-last-activity-7493340969833205761-2rKi
- https://x.com/moritz_stephan/status/2087574156451983734
- https://superbcrew.com/hone-raises-60-million-in-funding-at-285m-valuation/
- https://ezliu.github.io/
- https://github.com/austrian-code-wizard
- https://x.com/moritz_stephan/status/1948084312529838448
- https://schneida.substack.com/p/a-60m-seed-priced-like-a-series-b
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andrewgao22_im-coming-for-moritz-stephans-first-place-activity-7340448107916103681-ozCQ
- https://x.com/moritz_stephan/status/1932498121910780241
- https://sfstandard.com/2026/03/24/grind-sf-startup-racing-build-ai-software-engineer/
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/moritz-stephan_devin-is-the-best-agent-out-there-by-an-order-activity-7173406443201523713-l_52
- https://x.com/moritz_stephan


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