# Russell Kaplan ![Russell Kaplan](/resources/cognition/portraits/russell-kaplan.webp) President & Co-Founder at Cognition Cognition San Francisco Bay Area ## At Cognition - Role: President (Leadership) - Joined: Jan 2024 - How they joined: Directly - Before Cognition: Director of Engineering & ML, Scale AI - Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: Scale AI; TreeHacks (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together) ## Identity - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russelljkaplan - X: @russelljkaplan - GitHub: https://github.com/rkaplan - Domain: cognition.ai ## Notes - 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." (https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/2112179725372391829) - 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" (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/russelljkaplan_we-recently-announced-some-major-exec-hires-activity-7490893044276195328--ait?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAHChknoBPS3_ET2jhYNHGZQZ_sbC82_Bn7Y) - 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" (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/russelljkaplan_we-recently-announced-some-major-exec-hires-activity-7490893044276195328--ait) - 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." (https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/2061920322325205007) - LinkedIn post on Cognition recruiting and exec hires. Quote: "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!" (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/russelljkaplan_more-devins-in-more-places-cognition-activity-7465639227163250688-eb0v?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAHChknoBPS3_ET2jhYNHGZQZ_sbC82_Bn7Y) - Current role is President at Cognition. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/russelljkaplan) - 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!" (https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/2105350763547406548) - 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!" (https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/2059696925096776113) - 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: 🧵" (https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/1590183663819718658) - 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." (https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/2105005176218337284) - Identified by Hg as Cognition's founding president. (https://latent.space/wiki/russell-kaplan-14ebca95/) - Described his work on AI software engineering through Devin in an interview with Jason Richards. (https://latent.space/wiki/russell-kaplan-14ebca95/) - Previously led Scale AI's machine-learning organization. (https://latent.space/wiki/russell-kaplan-14ebca95/) - Worked on Tesla Autopilot. (https://latent.space/wiki/russell-kaplan-14ebca95/) - Leading machine learning at Scale gave him visibility into foundation-model data pipelines. (https://latent.space/wiki/russell-kaplan-14ebca95/) - Described Devin as asynchronous task delegation: an engineer assigns work, the agent writes and tests code, iterates on errors and returns a pull request. (https://latent.space/wiki/russell-kaplan-14ebca95/) - Russell Kaplan is President of Cognition. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/turnernovak_from-ali-partovi-on-how-cognition-president-activity-7460324426660720640-4Uwh) - At the time Ali Partovi interviewed him for Neo Scholars, Russell Kaplan was interning at Tesla HQ. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/turnernovak_from-ali-partovi-on-how-cognition-president-activity-7460324426660720640-4Uwh) - Russell Kaplan was selected as a Neo Scholar. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/turnernovak_from-ali-partovi-on-how-cognition-president-activity-7460324426660720640-4Uwh) - Russell Kaplan finished the coding challenge Ali Partovi gave him in 10 or 15 minutes. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/turnernovak_from-ali-partovi-on-how-cognition-president-activity-7460324426660720640-4Uwh) - Russell Kaplan gave Ali Partovi a coding interview, which no one had ever done before. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/turnernovak_from-ali-partovi-on-how-cognition-president-activity-7460324426660720640-4Uwh) - Russell Kaplan helped Ali Partovi identify other top people at Stanford and vouched for the organization. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/turnernovak_from-ali-partovi-on-how-cognition-president-activity-7460324426660720640-4Uwh) - Russell Kaplan is a co-founder of Cognition. (https://blog.joelonsdale.com/p/ep-147-scott-wu-and-russell-kaplan) - Russell began his career as a machine learning engineer on Tesla's Autopilot team. (https://blog.joelonsdale.com/p/ep-147-scott-wu-and-russell-kaplan) - Russell sold his video data company, Helia, to Scale AI. (https://blog.joelonsdale.com/p/ep-147-scott-wu-and-russell-kaplan) - A year after co-founding Cognition, they released Devin, the first AI software agent. (https://blog.joelonsdale.com/p/ep-147-scott-wu-and-russell-kaplan) - Russell Kaplan is the president of Cognition, an artificial intelligence startup best known as the makers of Devin, described as the first AI software engineer. (https://www.goldmansachs.com/pdfs/insights/goldman-sachs-talks/russell-kaplan/transcript.pdf) - Before joining Cognition, Russell Kaplan was at Scale AI, which bought his computer vision company Helia. (https://www.goldmansachs.com/pdfs/insights/goldman-sachs-talks/russell-kaplan/transcript.pdf) - Russell Kaplan worked at Tesla, building the auto-pilot stack on the computer vision side. (https://www.goldmansachs.com/pdfs/insights/goldman-sachs-talks/russell-kaplan/transcript.pdf) - Cognition reached a $4 billion valuation in March, up from $2 billion the year prior. (https://www.goldmansachs.com/pdfs/insights/goldman-sachs-talks/russell-kaplan/transcript.pdf) - Russell Kaplan (@russelljkaplan) is associated with Cognition and announced that Cognition is acquiring Windsurf. (https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/1944822012196655511) - The Windsurf acquisition went from a first call after 5pm on Friday to a signed definitive agreement on the morning of the post. (https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/1944822012196655511) - Russell Kaplan (@russelljkaplan) posted about Cognition acquiring Windsurf. (https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/1944845868273709520) - Windsurf the company was missing its founders and research team but has a beloved product, valuable IP, an incredible business ($82M ARR with enterprise growth doubling quarter-over-quarter), known brand, and a world-class team in every function—GTM, enterprise engineering, and much more. (https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/1944845868273709520) - With the news, Cognition is adding Windsurf's firepower to deliver the most complete AI coding solution in the market. (https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/1944845868273709520) - Cognition gets all improvements built on top of Windsurf's IP from here, all Windsurf training data, and all Windsurf trademark and brand assets. (https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/1944845868273709520) - The weekend meme was 'Is Windsurf now an empty shell?' and Kaplan states the opposite is true. (https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/1944845868273709520) - Russell Kaplan is president of Cognition. (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/) - Cognition announced in a blog post on Monday that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire AI coding startup Windsurf. (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/) - Cognition is acquiring Windsurf's IP and product, which include its AI-powered IDE, alongside all of the employees who were not hired by Google. (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/) - Cognition did not announce the price it acquired Windsurf for; however, the company says Windsurf reached $82 million in ARR, with enterprise ARR doubling quarter-over-quarter. (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/) - Cognition says Windsurf's user base reached at least 350 enterprise customers and "hundreds of thousands" of daily active users. (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/) - In the near term, Windsurf's team will continue working on its AI-powered IDE, while Cognition works on its AI coding agent, Devin. (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/) - Russell Kaplan is president of Cognition. (https://www.forbes.com.au/news/innovation/coders-worry-the-ai-from-this-2-billion-startup-could-replace-their-jobs/) - Cognition president Russell Kaplan says Cognition has signed on dozens of customers, with a typical annual contract of six to seven figures. (https://www.forbes.com.au/news/innovation/coders-worry-the-ai-from-this-2-billion-startup-could-replace-their-jobs/) - Cognition was founded in January of 2024. (https://www.goldmansachs.com/pdfs/insights/goldman-sachs-talks/russell-kaplan/transcript.pdf) - In 2023, Scott Wu and Russell Kaplan co-founded Cognition. (https://blog.joelonsdale.com/p/ep-147-scott-wu-and-russell-kaplan) - Helia was acquired by Scale AI. (https://helia.ai/) - Russell Kaplan was CEO of Helia. (https://helia.ai/) - Russell Kaplan was formerly a senior machine learning scientist at Tesla. (https://helia.ai/) - Russell Kaplan has undergraduate and graduate degrees in AI from Stanford University. (https://helia.ai/) - Helia was a San Francisco based computer vision company. (https://helia.ai/) - Helia was founded in 2019 by Russell Kaplan, Daniel Berrios, and Ashwin Sreenivas. (https://helia.ai/) - Founded and co-directed TreeHacks, Stanford's flagship hackathon (2014-2017), and was a researcher in the Stanford Vision Lab advised by Fei-Fei Li and Justin Johnson, TA for CS231N and CS230. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/russelljkaplan) - Public headline says "President & Co-Founder at Cognition". (https://www.linkedin.com/in/russelljkaplan) - Public headline says "President at Cognition". (https://www.linkedin.com/in/russelljkaplan) - Russell Kaplan is the founding president of Cognition. (https://hgcapital.com/insights/orbit-podcast/a-golden-age-of-software-engineering) - Cognition's Devin product is an AI software engineer capable of completing programming tasks and collaborating with human developers. (https://hgcapital.com/insights/orbit-podcast/a-golden-age-of-software-engineering) - He won a trip to Silicon Valley and a ride in what was then called the Google Self-Driving Car project by taking the most online classes and recruiting the most people. (https://hgcapital.com/insights/orbit-podcast/a-golden-age-of-software-engineering) - He attended Stanford and was in the vision lab there, a researcher advised by Fei-Fei Li, working on steganography and other computer vision techniques. (https://hgcapital.com/insights/orbit-podcast/a-golden-age-of-software-engineering) - Russell Kaplan is co-founder and CEO of Helia. (https://www.builtinsf.com/articles/scale-raises-155m-series-d-artificial-intelligence-hiring) - Helia is an SF-based AI company whose software helps companies run AI models on video streams in real time. (https://www.builtinsf.com/articles/scale-raises-155m-series-d-artificial-intelligence-hiring) - Helia's three-person team previously worked on the development of Tesla's autopilot system. (https://www.builtinsf.com/articles/scale-raises-155m-series-d-artificial-intelligence-hiring) - Scale announced its acquisition of Helia as part of its $155 million Series D round led by Tiger Global. (https://www.builtinsf.com/articles/scale-raises-155m-series-d-artificial-intelligence-hiring) - Previous roles include Director of Engineering & ML at Scale AI; Co-founder & CEO at Helia; Sr. Machine Learning Scientist (Autopilot) at Tesla; Founder & Co-Director at TreeHacks. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/russelljkaplan) - Education history includes M.S., Computer Science, Stanford University; B.S. with Distinction, Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta Pi, Computer Science, Stanford University; The Dalton School. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/russelljkaplan) - Previous roles include President at Cognition; Director of Engineering & ML at Scale AI; Co-founder & CEO at Helia; Sr. Machine Learning Scientist (Autopilot) at Tesla; Founder & Co-Director at TreeHacks. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/russelljkaplan) - Location is San Francisco Bay Area. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/russelljkaplan) ## Experience - President & Co-Founder at Cognition - San Francisco Bay Area (Jan 2024 - Present) - Director of Engineering & ML at Scale AI - San Francisco Bay Area (Jan 2020 - Jan 2024): Leading ML and ML infrastructure. - Co-founder & CEO at Helia (Jan 2019 - Jan 2020): Acquired by Scale AI. Helia develops computer vision software and infrastructure to provide real-time understanding of video data. - Sr. Machine Learning Scientist (Autopilot) at Tesla (Jan 2017 - Jan 2019): 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 - Founder & Co-Director at TreeHacks (Jan 2014 - Jan 2017): 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+. - President at Cognition (Jan 2024 - Present) - Director of Engineering & ML at Scale AI (Jan 2020 - Dec 2024): Leading ML and ML infrastructure. - Co-founder & CEO at Helia (Jan 2019 - Dec 2020): Acquired by Scale AI. Helia develops computer vision software and infrastructure to provide real-time understanding of video data. - Sr. Machine Learning Scientist (Autopilot) at Tesla (Jan 2017 - Dec 2019): 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 - Founder & Co-Director at TreeHacks (Jan 2014 - Dec 2017): 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+. ## Education - Stanford University - M.S., Computer Science: • Researcher, Stanford Vision Lab, advised by Fei-Fei Li and Justin Johnson • TA for CS231N: Convolutional Neural Networks, and CS230: Deep Learning - Stanford University - B.S. with Distinction, Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta Pi, Computer Science: • Founder and co-director of TreeHacks, Stanford's hackathon • Senior Section Leader, Small Group Leader, and Social Chair for CS198 - undergrad CS TA program - The Dalton School ## Sources - https://www.linkedin.com/in/russelljkaplan - https://x.com/russelljkaplan - https://www.builtinsf.com/articles/scale-raises-155m-series-d-artificial-intelligence-hiring - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/turnernovak_from-ali-partovi-on-how-cognition-president-activity-7460324426660720640-4Uwh - https://api.github.com/users/rkaplan/repos?per_page=100&sort=updated - https://blog.joelonsdale.com/p/ep-147-scott-wu-and-russell-kaplan - https://latent.space/wiki/russell-kaplan-14ebca95/ - https://hgcapital.com/insights/orbit-podcast/a-golden-age-of-software-engineering - https://www.linkedin.com/in/russelljkaplan?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAA0a09sBNmWSIxp0UtbFYnvj3hK5NjHshYA - https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/cognition-maker-of-the-ai-coding-agent-devin-acquires-windsurf/ - https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/1944822012196655511 - https://helia.ai/ - https://www.forbes.com.au/news/innovation/coders-worry-the-ai-from-this-2-billion-startup-could-replace-their-jobs/ - https://www.goldmansachs.com/pdfs/insights/goldman-sachs-talks/russell-kaplan/transcript.pdf - https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/1944845868273709520 - https://github.com/rkaplan - https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/2112179725372391829 - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/russelljkaplan_we-recently-announced-some-major-exec-hires-activity-7490893044276195328--ait?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAHChknoBPS3_ET2jhYNHGZQZ_sbC82_Bn7Y - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/russelljkaplan_we-recently-announced-some-major-exec-hires-activity-7490893044276195328--ait - https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/2061920322325205007 - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/russelljkaplan_more-devins-in-more-places-cognition-activity-7465639227163250688-eb0v?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAHChknoBPS3_ET2jhYNHGZQZ_sbC82_Bn7Y - https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/2105350763547406548 - https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/2059696925096776113 - https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/1590183663819718658 - https://x.com/russelljkaplan/status/2105005176218337284 Researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-04. Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people/russell-kaplan · Everyone at Cognition: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people