- Joined
- Jan 2024
- How they joined
- Directly
- Before Cognition
- Scale AIDirector of Engineering & ML
- Status
- Current
“One of them is: we try harder. We believe the team *is* the company, and usually the best people in the world are already crushing it and happy in their current role. You have to put in enormous effort to hiring each person. If it's easy, you might not be aiming high enough.”
- Argues coding tasks are becoming 'intelligence saturated', citing internal Cognition data; covered by Business Insider in Oct 2026. Quote: "This is directionally consistent with our internal data @cognition. Many tasks within software engineering are now "intelligence saturated." Once any model can do the task well, cost and speed are all that matter."Oct 19, 2026This is directionally consistent with our internal data @cognition. Many tasks within software engineering are now "intelligence saturated." Once any model can do the task well, cost and speed are all that matter.
- LinkedIn post on Cognition recruiting and exec hires. Quote: "We recently announced some major exec hires at Cognition: Paul Grewal, our Chief Legal & Global Affairs Officer; Art L., our VP of Global Partnerships; and Jared Palmer, our VP of Engineering. I got tons of messages asking, basically: "what is Cognition's secret to recruiting?" One of them is: we try harder. We believe the team *is* the company, and usually the best people in the world are already crushing it and happy in their current role. You have to put in enormous effort to hiring each person. If it's easy, you might not be aiming high enough. For example, Art was hit up by a ton of founders after the Brex acquisition. He was locked in, not considering new opportunities and consistently declined to engage in them. It took relentless follow up to get him to even be willing to lift his head up and visit our office. Only when he visited did the incredible opportunity at Cognition bec"Aug 5, 2026We recently announced some major exec hires at Cognition: Paul Grewal, our Chief Legal & Global Affairs Officer; Art L., our VP of Global Partnerships; and Jared Palmer, our VP of Engineering. I got tons of messages asking, basically: "what is Cognition's secret to recruiting?" One of them is: we try harder. We believe the team *is* the company, and usually the best people in the world are already crushing it and happy in their current role. You have to put in enormous effort to hiring each person. If it's easy, you might not be aiming high enough. For example, Art was hit up by a ton of founders after the Brex acquisition. He was locked in, not considering new opportunities and consistently declined to engage in them. It took relentless follow up to get him to even be willing to lift his head up and visit our office. Only when he visited did the incredible opportunity at Cognition become a lot clearer. Sometimes you just have to keep trying.
- Positions Devin Desktop as Cognition's first fully agent-neutral launch and Cognition as 'the Independent Agent Lab'. Quote: "Devin Desktop is our first product launch that’s fully agent-neutral. You can run your own custom background agents directly from the desktop app, Devin, or even Claude Code / Codex. Part of Cognition being the Independent Agent Lab is working well with all of the agents - excited to do more in this direction."Jun 2, 2026Devin Desktop is our first product launch that’s fully agent-neutral. You can run your own custom background agents directly from the desktop app, Devin, or even Claude Code / Codex. Part of Cognition being the Independent Agent Lab is working well with all of the agents - excited to do more in this direction.
- Current role is President at Cognition.
- Announced ex-Snowflake sales chief Chris Degnan as Cognition CRO, part of a 2026 executive build-out he personally fronts as President. Quote: "Incredibly excited to welcome Chris Degnan to Cognition as our CRO. Chris is a legend of sales, having scaled Snowflake from 0 -> $3B in ARR, and will help take Cognition to next level as we continue to grow with our customers. Welcome!"Sep 30, 2026Incredibly excited to welcome Chris Degnan to Cognition as our CRO. Chris is a legend of sales, having scaled Snowflake from 0 -> $3B in ARR, and will help take Cognition to next level as we continue to grow with our customers. Welcome!
- Ties Cognition's self-driving-software ambition directly to his Tesla Autopilot infra experience (internal 'Operation Vacation' project). Quote: "Big milestone today. But still very early for self-driving software. When I was working on Autopilot at Tesla, we had an internal infra project called "Operation Vacation" - the goal being that the entire Autopilot engineering team could take a vacation and come back to a better self-driving stack as long as the data kept flowing and the models kept training. We'll soon see the same idea come to life for entire software products, managed and improved by fleets of Devins. Last year, our usage graph had a big dip during the holidays. A goal on our engineering team is that the same time this year has no dip, because the Devins are proactive and working by default. Automations are live in the product already - give it a try!"May 27, 2026Big milestone today. But still very early for self-driving software. When I was working on Autopilot at Tesla, we had an internal infra project called "Operation Vacation" - the goal being that the entire Autopilot engineering team could take a vacation and come back to a better self-driving stack as long as the data kept flowing and the models kept training. We'll soon see the same idea come to life for entire software products, managed and improved by fleets of Devins. Last year, our usage graph had a big dip during the holidays. A goal on our engineering team is that the same time this year has no dip, because the Devins are proactive and working by default. Automations are live in the product already - give it a try!
- At Scale AI he built Scale Spellbook, a platform for LLM apps, in late 2022, a year before Cognition. Quote: "Excited to share what I’ve been working on lately: Scale Spellbook — the platform for large language model apps! Some fun things I learned about LLMs while building this product: 🧵"Nov 9, 2022
- Welcomed security veteran Alex Stamos to Cognition, linking the future of software engineering to cybersecurity. Quote: "The future of software engineering is increasingly coupled with the future of cybersecurity. Incredibly excited to welcome @alexstamos to Cognition to help build that future with us."Sep 29, 2026The future of software engineering is increasingly coupled with the future of cybersecurity. Incredibly excited to welcome @alexstamos to Cognition to help build that future with us.
- Identified by Hg as Cognition's founding president.Sep 17, 2026
- Described his work on AI software engineering through Devin in an interview with Jason Richards.Sep 17, 2026
- Previously led Scale AI's machine-learning organization.Sep 17, 2026
- Worked on Tesla Autopilot.Sep 17, 2026
Leading ML and ML infrastructure.
Acquired by Scale AI. Helia develops computer vision software and infrastructure to provide real-time understanding of video data.
Developing computer vision algorithms and neural network training infrastructure to create full self-driving vehicles. • Created HydraNet, Tesla's large scale multitask neural network, which became the core vision model for Autopilot • Wrote and helped maintain Tesla's internal neural network training framework on top of PyTorch • Made internal neural network training 20-30% faster • Trained and shipped vehicle cut-in prediction, substantially reducing safety-critical interventions • Responsible for working with Tesla's silicon design team to ensure next generation inference and training chips met Autopilot's deep learning requirements
Started TreeHacks, which is now Stanford's flagship intercollegiate hackathon. Oversaw all things external to Stanford, including fundraising, marketing, hacker recruitment, and press. Led sponsorship efforts to fundraise $300k+.
Leading ML and ML infrastructure.
Acquired by Scale AI. Helia develops computer vision software and infrastructure to provide real-time understanding of video data.
• Researcher, Stanford Vision Lab, advised by Fei-Fei Li and Justin Johnson • TA for CS231N: Convolutional Neural Networks, and CS230: Deep Learning
We recently announced some major exec hires at Cognition: Paul Grewal, our Chief Legal & Global Affairs Officer; Art L., our VP of Global Partnerships; and Jared Palmer, our VP of Engineering. I got tons of messages asking, basically: "what is Cognition's secret to recruiting?" One of them is: we try harder. We believe the team *is* the company, and usually the best people in the world are already crushing it and happy in their current role. You have to put in enormous effort to hiring each person. If it's easy, you might not be aiming high enough. For example, Art was hit up by a ton of founders after the Brex acquisition. He was locked in, not considering new opportunities and consistently declined to engage in them. It took relentless follow up to get him to even be willing to lift his head up and visit our office. Only when he visited did the incredible opportunity at Cognition become a lot clearer. Sometimes you just have to keep trying.
We recently announced some major exec hires at Cognition: Paul Grewal, our Chief Legal & Global Affairs Officer; Art L., our VP of Global Partnerships; and Jared Palmer, our VP of Engineering. I got tons of messages asking, basically: "what is Cognition's secret to recruiting?" One of them is: we try harder. We believe the team *is* the company, and usually the best people in the world are already crushing it and happy in their current role. You have to put in enormous effort to hiring each person. If it's easy, you might not be aiming high enough. For example, Art was hit up by a ton of founders after the Brex acquisition. He was locked in, not considering new opportunities and consistently declined to engage in them. It took relentless follow up to get him to even be willing to lift his head up and visit our office. Only when he visited did the incredible opportunity at Cognition become a lot clearer. Sometimes you just have to keep trying.
Big fundraising milestone today. But still very early for self-driving software. When I was working on Autopilot at Tesla, we had an internal infra project called "Operation Vacation" - the goal being that the entire Autopilot engineering team could take a vacation and come back to a better self-driving stack as long as the data kept flowing and the models kept training. We'll soon see the same idea come to life for entire software products, managed and improved by fleets of Devins. Last year, our usage graph had a big dip during the holidays. A goal on our engineering team is that the same time this year has no dip, because the Devins are proactive and working by default. Automations are live in the product already - give it a try!
@Mclader @cognition @ScottWu46 🔥 welcome!
This is directionally consistent with our internal data @cognition. Many tasks within software engineering are now "intelligence saturated." Once any model can do the task well, cost and speed are all that matter.
Khosla is an investor in both Cognition and Factory btw.
At Cognition we try hard to close candidates. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. But one thing we never do is attack the folks we tried to hire full-time just because they decided to go a different direction. And as an industry we should not accept that behavior.
@dylan522p Dylan - Chris told Factory (among ~10 other companies he was also advising) that he was joining Cognition full-time as CRO. In response, Matan asked Chris to consider a full-time role at Factory instead. Only after Chris declined did Matan decide to attack Chris's reputation. In the many reference calls I made before we extended Chris an offer, the thing that stood out most consistently was testimonial of Chris's unwavering integrity. It's disappointing to see people trash candidates after they fail to close them, and not something our industry should support.
Incredibly excited to welcome Chris Degnan to Cognition as our CRO. Chris is a legend of sales, having scaled Snowflake from 0 -> $3B in ARR, and will help take Cognition to next level as we continue to grow with our customers. Welcome!
The future of software engineering is increasingly coupled with the future of cybersecurity. Incredibly excited to welcome @alexstamos to Cognition to help build that future with us.
We’re about to turbocharge marketing at Cognition. Brandon is a legend - come work with him.
@anjanps5 @walden_yan @imjaredz Yes, for that you can use the Devin Outposts API: https://t.co/l2xCFtVqE4
