# Nick Wong

![Nick Wong](/resources/cognition/portraits/nick-wong.webp)

eng + gtm  
Cognition  
San Francisco, CA (Cognition SF office)

## At Cognition

- Role: Special Projects Engineer (Engineering)
- Joined: Mar 2026
- How they joined: With Axlora
- Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: Google (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together)

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerhouseofthecell
- Domain: cognition.ai

## Notes
- Posted Aug 19, 2026 that 'customers are finding and resolving O(million) of security findings with a product suite my team built. and now it's in times square.', confirming he leads the team behind Devin for Security. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/powerhouseofthecell_customers-are-finding-and-resolving-omillion-activity-7495914787873173504-Bg1k)
- Quoted in Cognition's July 1, 2026 Devin Security Swarm launch release as 'Security Engineering Lead at Cognition', a title. (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cognition-launches-devin-security-swarm-to-tackle-the-vulnerability-backlog-302814800.html)
- Co-Owner & CTO of Axlora (Jun 2024-Mar 2026), the compliance implementation company LinkedIn lists as 'Acquired by Cognition'; Axlora's site offers free compliance and security resources for startups. (https://axlora.com/)
- Experiments that grew out of Playground led to Devin for Security (devin.ai/security); he now leads much of Cognition's work across security and governance products and was hiring for infrastructure/platform primitives. (https://cognition.com/team-spotlights/nick-wong)
- Commented on Cognition hiring a CISO (Oct 2026): 'searching for a ciso is hard for so many reasons, and im stoked that we've found such a legend to carry the torch at cognition'. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/powerhouseofthecell_starting-today-i-will-be-joining-cognition-activity-7511288052875485184-2aef)
- Co-founded Crosswire (Sep 2021-Oct 2024) with Johnny Wang, an a16z-, General Catalyst- and Harpoon-backed startup building identity threat detection and response software; he joked on stage that 'my co-founder is Johnny Wang, which is very confusing.' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eW9dhr1GDo)
- Before Cognition, Nick spent several years starting companies; most recently he and cofounder Mary built a compliance implementation services company that was profitable with paying customers. (https://cognition.com/team-spotlights/nick-wong)
- Cognition acquired his compliance implementation company after FDE Stephen Cornwell and Calvin (VP of Customer Engineering) separately booked 'catch up' calls, told him to try Devin, and Calvin suggested an acquisition - a warm-path recruiting pattern Cognition uses for founders. (https://cognition.com/team-spotlights/nick-wong)
- He built Devin's Playground, a secure environment where anyone at Cognition can use Devin to build and deploy internal apps (CogHub intranet, coffee ordering app, merch store, recruiting tools) with guardrails on sensitive data. (https://cognition.com/team-spotlights/nick-wong)
- At Navigate 2026 he gave a talk on building effective teams of agents, framed by Browserbase as 'Your agents should be a workforce, not a factory'. (https://x.com/browserbase/status/2110826607162413557)
- Devin Security Swarm, the product he spoke for at launch, uses an agentic map-reduce architecture with parallel agents, reproduces each finding in an isolated sandbox, and found 36 of 50 real-world GHSA vulnerabilities across 14 languages at 30% lower cost per finding than the next most accurate scanner. (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cognition-launches-devin-security-swarm-to-tackle-the-vulnerability-backlog-302814800.html)
- Nick and cofounder Mary joined Cognition's SF office together after the acquisition; CEO Scott Wu congratulated them on the acquisition. (https://cognition.com/team-spotlights/nick-wong)
- As Special Projects Engineer he describes the job as 'find problems and solve them'. (https://cognition.com/team-spotlights/nick-wong)
- Announced as a speaker at Browserbase's Navigate conference (Sept 10, 2026, San Francisco), billed as 'Special Projects Engineer @cognition' alongside speakers from Ramp and Sourcery. (https://x.com/browserbase/status/2090172608323195351)
- Pitched Crosswire at Founders You Should Know in December 2022; Crosswire described itself on X as 'the future of identity management at scale for the modern enterprise', an identity-security thread that runs straight into his later security-lead role at Cognition. (https://x.com/Try_Crosswire)
- Harvard BA in Biomedical Engineering & Computer Science with a Chinese (Mandarin) citation; CS50 teaching assistant 2017-2019 and one of 5 TAs to receive the top TA award voted by ~900 students. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerhouseofthecell)
- Says 130+ people at Cognition are former founders, and that joining 'would feel a little bit like founding another company - just with the support, infrastructure, and community of an established one.' (https://cognition.com/team-spotlights/nick-wong)
- Associate Product Manager on Google Fi (Aug 2020-Sep 2021), where he launched new onboarding flows for Google's phone plan, after an APM internship on ChromeOS in summer 2019 designing a stylus for Chromebooks. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerhouseofthecell)
- Research before tech: Algorithms Researcher at BGI Genomics in summer 2018 using LSTMs to detect disease-causing genetic abnormalities in maternal genomic data, and a 2017 research assistantship at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerhouseofthecell)
- Software Developer at antsle, Inc. (2017-2018) while at Harvard; LinkedIn skills (Linux system administration, VPN, network security) point to early infrastructure/security work that predates his founder years. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerhouseofthecell)

## Experience
- Special Projects Engineer at Cognition - San Francisco Bay Area (Mar 2026 - Present)
- Co-Owner & CTO at Axlora - San Francisco Bay Area (Jun 2024 - Mar 2026): Acquired by Cognition
- Co-Founder at Crosswire - Everywhere (Sep 2021 - Oct 2024): a16z, General Catalyst, & Harpoon-backed. built software for identity threat detection and response
- APM - Google Fi at Google - Mountain View, California, United States (Aug 2020 - Sep 2021): launched new onboarding flows for Google's phone plan
- APM Intern - ChromeOS at Google - San Francisco Bay Area (May 2019 - Aug 2019): designed efficient stylus for chromebooks
- Teaching Assistant at Harvard University - Cambridge, Massachusetts (Sep 2017 - May 2019): cs50, 1 of 5 to receive top TA award voted by ~900 students
- Algorithms Researcher at BGI Genomics - Shenzhen, Guangdong, China (May 2018 - Aug 2018): used LSTMs to detect disease-causing genetic abnormalities in maternal genomic data
- Software Developer at antsle, Inc. - Greater San Diego Area (Dec 2017 - Jan 2018): handled security response to 2 zero-days: meltdown & spectre
- Research Assistant at Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering - Boston, MA (Jun 2017 - Sep 2017)
- Busser at Outback Steakhouse (Jun 2015 - Jul 2016)

## Education
- Harvard University - Bachelor of Arts - BA, Biomedical Engineering & Computer Science, Chinese (Mandarin)

## Sources
- https://cognition.com/team-spotlights/nick-wong
- https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cognition-launches-devin-security-swarm-to-tackle-the-vulnerability-backlog-302814800.html
- https://x.com/browserbase/status/2110826607162413557
- https://x.com/browserbase/status/2090172795082915859
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerhouseofthecell
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eW9dhr1GDo
- https://x.com/Try_Crosswire
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerhouseofthecell?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAABnWXxABAODsGGj8PS20Krf6ViXv-hsacpg
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/powerhouseofthecell_customers-are-finding-and-resolving-omillion-activity-7495914787873173504-Bg1k
- https://axlora.com/
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/powerhouseofthecell_starting-today-i-will-be-joining-cognition-activity-7511288052875485184-2aef
- https://x.com/browserbase/status/2090172608323195351


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