# Piyush Marghade Self-described AI/ML consultant and product/project manager in Nagpur, India; LinkedIn claims a 2024 Lead PM role at Cognition (unverified) Self Employed Nagpur, Maharashtra, India ## At Cognition - Role: Former Lead Product Manager (Product) - Joined: Jan 2024 - How they joined: Directly - Before Cognition: Lead Business Analyst, OpenAI ## Identity - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/piyush-marghade-109387402 ## Notes - Profile lists 'Lead Product Manager at Cognition' for 2024-01 to 2024-12, describing an '8-person engineering team building AI-powered software development platform, delivering 12 major features and 40+ improvements'; the entry names no product (Devin or Windsurf), team, or colleague. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/piyush-marghade-109387402) - LinkedIn profile self-describes as 'AI/ML Consultant | Project Manager | Technical Consultant' and lists current role as Independent Consultant (Self Employed) since 2025, based in Nagpur, Maharashtra, India. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/piyush-marghade-109387402) - Profile also lists Co-Founder at a 'Stealth AI Startup' from 2025, claiming a '$2.5M+ seed funding from tier-1 VCs in Q1 2025' and a team grown 0 to 8; no co-founder, company name, or investor is named, and no press or funding record was found. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/piyush-marghade-109387402) - Cognition announced a definitive agreement to acquire Windsurf, 'the agentic IDE', including its IP, product, trademark, brand and team; TechCrunch reported it came days after Google DeepMind hired Windsurf's CEO and research leaders. (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/) - Earlier self-reported roles: Lead Business Analyst at OpenAI (2020-2023), Project Administrator at Notion (2012-2019), Product Analyst at Itransition Group (2008-2012); no team, lab, desk, or collaborator is named for any of them. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/piyush-marghade-109387402) - Profile lists both a BS and an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University, with no dates. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/piyush-marghade-109387402) - Profile summary claims '17+ years of experience' and consulting 'with Fortune 500 executives on generative AI transformation'. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/piyush-marghade-109387402) - Profile shows about 350 connections and 349 followers, which is small for the 17-year, OpenAI/Notion/Cognition/Stanford career it describes. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/piyush-marghade-109387402) ## Experience - Independent Consultant at Self Employed (Jan 2025 - Present) - Co-Founder at Stealth AI Startup (Jan 2025 - Present): - Established company vision, business model, and go-to-market strategy for AI-powered B2B SaaS platform; raised $2.5M+ seed funding from tier-1 VCs in Q1 2025. - Defined technical architecture and AI/ML component requirements; recruited and hired 5-person engineering team while maintaining hands-on contribution to core product development. - Led product strategy and feature prioritization, synthesizing customer discovery insights from 50+ conversations into product roadmap focused on achieving product-market fit within 12 months. - Built investor relationships and narrative around company differentiation, AI capabilities, and market opportunity; successfully closed seed round with prominent AI-focused venture partners. - Established company culture, operational processes, and decision-making frameworks for early-stage startup scaling from 0 to 8 people in first year. - Lead Product Manager at Cognition (Jan 2024 - Dec 2024): - Oversaw product roadmap execution and sprint planning for 8-person engineering team building AI-powered software development platform, delivering 12 major features and 40+ improvements on schedule. - Established technical project standards, design review processes, and deployment procedures that reduced production incidents by 60% and improved code review cycle time from 5 to 2 days. - Partnered with product and design to translate customer feedback from 100+ beta users into validated feature requirements and technical specifications. - Managed technical dependencies and integration challenges across 3 product teams, facilitating weekly syncs that resolved blocking issues and kept 95% of features on critical path. - Drove performance optimization initiatives that improved platform latency by 45%, directly improving user experience metrics and reducing customer churn by 8%. - Lead Business Analyst at OpenAI (Jan 2020 - Dec 2023): - Led product strategy and go-to-market initiatives for GPT API products, managing $50M+ revenue stream and maintaining partnerships with 500+ enterprise and developer customers. - Defined product requirements and success metrics for 5 major feature releases, balancing technical feasibility with market demand; features reached 1M+ monthly active users within 6 months. - Project Administrator at Notion (Jun 2012 - Dec 2019): - Managed end-to-end project execution for 15+ concurrent initiatives spanning product development, infrastructure upgrades, and organizational scaling efforts during period of 10x user growth. - Established project governance framework and PMO processes adopted across 120+ person organization, reducing project delays by 40% and improving stakeholder communication. - Coordinated cross-functional roadmap planning with product, engineering, design, and business teams, synthesizing priorities from 50+ monthly feature requests into prioritized quarterly releases. - Implemented project tracking and resource allocation systems that optimized team capacity utilization and reduced context-switching overhead by 30%. - Supported company scaling from 30 to 300+ employees by defining organizational workflows, onboarding processes, and inter-team communication protocols. - Product Analyst at Itransition Group (Jun 2008 - May 2012): - Analyzed machine learning model performance metrics and business KPIs for 8+ client projects, translating technical outputs into actionable product recommendations that improved model accuracy by average 12-15%. - Collaborated with data science and engineering teams to define requirements for predictive analytics features, resulting in 3 successful product launches across financial services and e-commerce verticals. - Conducted market research and competitive analysis on emerging AI/ML technologies, producing quarterly trend reports that informed product roadmap decisions for executive stakeholders. - Developed documentation and training materials for ML-powered features, ensuring adoption across customer base and reducing support tickets by 25%. - Owned product lifecycle management for 2 AI/ML modules, from concept through post-launch optimization, managing cross-functional teams and achieving 95% on-time delivery. ## Education - Stanford University - Bachelor of Science, Computer Science - Stanford University - Master of Science, Computer Science ## Sources - https://www.linkedin.com/in/piyush-marghade-109387402 - https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf - https://api.github.com/search/users?q=Marghade - https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/ Researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-04. Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people/piyush-marghade ยท Everyone at Cognition: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people