# Scott Wu ![Scott Wu](/resources/cognition/portraits/scott-wu.webp) Co-founder & CEO of Cognition (Devin, Devin Desktop/Windsurf); 3x IOI gold medalist, ex-Lunchclub CTO Cognition San Francisco, California, United States ## At Cognition - Role: Co-Founder and CEO (Leadership) - Joined: Nov 2023 - How they joined: Directly - Before Cognition: Co-Founder and CTO, Lunchclub - Olympiads: IOI gold 2012–2014 (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/olympiads/scott-wu-olp-90519ae95dee545b8a6e) - Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: A Simple Proof of the Cayley Formula… (2013); An Elementary Proof of the Cayley Formula… (2014); United States of America IOI team 2014; United States of America IOI team 2013; Lunchclub (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together) ## Identity - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-wu-8b94ab96 - X: @ScottWu46 - Domain: cognition.ai ## Notes - Current role is Co-Founder and CEO at Cognition. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-wu-8b94ab96) - ICPC 2016: Harvard team of Scott Wu (A.B. '19), Johnny Ho (A.B. '18) and Calvin Deng (A.B. '17), coached by Jelani Nelson and Robert Walton, placed 3rd at the World Finals in Phuket (gold medal, North America champion) after winning the regional as the only team to solve all eight problems. (https://seas.harvard.edu/news/2016/05/students-place-third-international-programming-contest) - Corridor is joining Cognition, where the team will be taking Devin Security to the next level. (https://cognition.com/blog/corridor-joining-cognition) - Corridor was started almost two years before the post with the mission of accelerating secure and autonomous software development; it became the security layer for AI-native teams. (https://cognition.com/blog/corridor-joining-cognition) - Corridor joined forces with Russell Kaplan, Cognition's President and one of Corridor's earliest advisors. (https://cognition.com/blog/corridor-joining-cognition) - Corridor will work together with Alex Stamos, Cognition CSO, once again. (https://cognition.com/blog/corridor-joining-cognition) - Corridor got to know Cognition's CTO Steven Hao over the past few months and looks forward to working closely with him. (https://cognition.com/blog/corridor-joining-cognition) - The post is signed by Jack and Ashwin of Corridor. (https://cognition.com/blog/corridor-joining-cognition) - Scott Wu and Walden were early angels in Interaction (The Interaction Company of California). (https://cognition.com/blog/interaction) - Poke users can continue using the product as before; soon Cognition's models and infrastructure will make Poke faster and more reliable. (https://cognition.com/blog/interaction) - Devin is used by some of the world's top companies for software engineering. (https://cognition.com/blog/interaction) - Cognition blog lists 'AI should earn its keep: Introducing the AI Productivity Guarantee'. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - Cognition blog lists 'Estimating the Productivity of an Autonomous AI Software Engineer'. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - Cognition blog lists 'Introducing Devin Desktop'. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - Cognition blog lists 'More Devins in More Places' at URL https://cognition.com/blog/series-d. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf, https://cognition.com/blog/series-d) - Cognition raised $1 billion at a $26 billion valuation (described as a $25B pre-money valuation in the linked headline). (https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/29/cognitions-scott-wu-says-ai-coding-agents-shouldnt-replace-humans/) - Cognition blog lists 'Devin in Windsurf'. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - Cognition blog lists 'An Early Preview of SWE-1.6 and Research Update'. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - Cognition blog lists 'How Cognition Uses Devin to Build Devin'. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - Cognition blog lists 'Introducing Cognition for Government'. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - Cognition blog lists 'Introducing Devin 2.2'. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - Cognition signed a definitive agreement to acquire Windsurf, the agentic IDE; the acquisition includes Windsurf's IP, product, trademark and brand, and business, plus its people. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - The Windsurf acquisition brings $82M of ARR, enterprise ARR doubling quarter-over-quarter, 350+ enterprise customers, and hundreds of thousands of daily active users. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - The Windsurf IDE comes with full access to the latest Claude models. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - Cognition's product Devin is described as the leading fully autonomous agent; the plan is to integrate Windsurf's capabilities and IP into Cognition's products. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf) - Cognition acquired Windsurf, an AI coding competitor, last year. (https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/29/cognitions-scott-wu-says-ai-coding-agents-shouldnt-replace-humans/) - Public headline says "Cognition". (https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-wu-8b94ab96) - Scott Wu competed in IOI (programming algorithm olympiad) three times and got golds. (https://cheekypint.substack.com/p/cognition-ceo-scott-wu-on-acquiring) - Scott Wu attended Harvard for two years and then dropped out. (https://cheekypint.substack.com/p/cognition-ceo-scott-wu-on-acquiring) - Cognition's product is an AI software engineer called Devin. (https://cheekypint.substack.com/p/cognition-ceo-scott-wu-on-acquiring) - Cognition acquired Windsurf over a weekend. (https://cheekypint.substack.com/p/cognition-ceo-scott-wu-on-acquiring) - Scott Wu says Alexandr Wang deserves credit for being the first of their group to be entrepreneurial and got him into the idea of starting a company. (https://cheekypint.substack.com/p/cognition-ceo-scott-wu-on-acquiring) - Scott Wu mentions peers from math/programming competitions including Johnny Ho (Perplexity cofounder), Demi Guo (started Pika), and Jesse Zhang (started Decagon). (https://cheekypint.substack.com/p/cognition-ceo-scott-wu-on-acquiring) - Cognition is the maker of Devin, described as one of the first and arguably most successful AI coding agents. (https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/29/cognitions-scott-wu-says-ai-coding-agents-shouldnt-replace-humans/) - Cognition announced the raise in a blog post titled 'Series D' laying out a vision where 'we are shifting to a world of self-driving software development.' (https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/29/cognitions-scott-wu-says-ai-coding-agents-shouldnt-replace-humans/) - Cognition says 89% of code committed by its engineers was committed by Devin, with the rest by local agents in Windsurf. (https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/29/cognitions-scott-wu-says-ai-coding-agents-shouldnt-replace-humans/) - Scott Wu is Cognition's founder and CEO; the article describes Cognition as his two-year-old AI coding agent startup. (https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/29/cognitions-scott-wu-says-ai-coding-agents-shouldnt-replace-humans/) - Scott Wu has been called one of the most accomplished child competitive programmers of all time, according to a recent profile in Colossus. (https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/29/cognitions-scott-wu-says-ai-coding-agents-shouldnt-replace-humans/) - Scott Wu won a nationwide math competition for seventh-graders. (https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/29/cognitions-scott-wu-says-ai-coding-agents-shouldnt-replace-humans/) - Scott Wu's childhood math and programming tournaments introduced him to other wunderkinds who went on to launch AI tech startups, like Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang. (https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/29/cognitions-scott-wu-says-ai-coding-agents-shouldnt-replace-humans/) - Wu says Devin works at 'somewhere between a junior and a mid-level engineer' depending on the task at hand. (https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/29/cognitions-scott-wu-says-ai-coding-agents-shouldnt-replace-humans/) - Cognition blog lists a post titled 'Introducing Devin Desktop'. (https://cognition.ai/blog/introducing-devin) - Cognition blog lists a post titled 'More Devins in More Places' linking to a series-d page. (https://cognition.ai/blog/introducing-devin) - Cognition blog lists a post titled 'Devin in Windsurf'. (https://cognition.ai/blog/introducing-devin) - Cognition blog lists a post titled 'Introducing Devin 2.2'. (https://cognition.ai/blog/introducing-devin) - Cognition signed a definitive agreement to acquire Windsurf, the agentic IDE; the acquisition includes Windsurf's IP, product, trademark and brand, and its team. (https://cognition.ai/blog/windsurf) - The Windsurf deal includes $82M of ARR, with enterprise ARR doubling quarter-over-quarter, 350+ enterprise customers and hundreds of thousands of daily active users. (https://cognition.ai/blog/windsurf) - Scott Wu sent a note to the Cognition team about the Windsurf acquisition, referencing Jeff (Windsurf's all-hands at 11am PT). (https://cognition.ai/blog/windsurf) - Cognition announced Devin, described as the first AI software engineer, in a blog post introducing Devin. (https://cognition.ai/blog/introducing-devin) - Devin correctly resolves 13.86% of SWE-bench issues end-to-end, exceeding the previous state-of-the-art of 1.96%. (https://cognition.ai/blog/introducing-devin) - Devin was in early access and users could join the waitlist. (https://cognition.ai/blog/introducing-devin) - Scott Wu attended IOI 2024 as a Guest delegation member for the United States of America. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/2686) - Wu launched Devin at 13% on SWE-Bench, took intense public criticism, then compounded into the lead Cognition now holds, with benchmarks around 90% on the original SWE-Bench and 80% on SWE-Bench Pro. (https://colossus.com/article/scott-wu-tapes-cognition/) - Yandex Cup 2023 Algorithm: qualified, ranked 14 in Semifinal. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:scott_wu) - Co-founded Cognition AI which developed Devin AI; it raised $21 million in funding from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Wu) - Topcoder Open 2022 Algorithm: rank 10, semifinalist (top-16), ranked 5 in Semifinal 2, score 441.15. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:scott_wu) - Google Hash Code 2022: rank 27, team 'team usa' with ecnerwala, ksun48, scottwu, stevenkplus, score 1302657. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:scott_wu) - Left Lunchclub. (https://stripe.com/ae/customers/cognition-scott-wu) - Cofounded Cognition after leaving Lunchclub. (https://stripe.com/ae/customers/cognition-scott-wu) - Topcoder Open 2021 Algorithm: rank 10, semifinalist (top-16), ranked 5 in Semifinal 2, score 352.76. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:scott_wu) - Came third place in the 2021 Google Code Jam. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Wu) - Topcoder Open 2020 Algorithm: rank 8, score 553.18. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:scott_wu) - Listed in 2020 edition of Forbes 30 Under 30 for co-founding Lunchclub. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Wu) - Topcoder Open 2019 Algorithm: rank 12, semifinalist (top-16), ranked 6 in Semifinal 1, score 511.35. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:scott_wu) - Co-founded Lunchclub and was its CTO until 2022. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Wu) - Topcoder Open Algorithm: Third place. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Wu) - Founded his first company, Lunchclub, an AI-powered networking platform. (https://stripe.com/ae/customers/cognition-scott-wu) - Topcoder Open 2016 Algorithm: rank 8, semifinalist (top-12), ranked 4 in Semifinal 1, score 497.69. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:scott_wu) - Part of Harvard team in the 2016 International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) which won a gold medal and came third place overall. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Wu) - ICPC (Representing Harvard): 1 Gold (2016) (Third place overall) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Wu) - Scott Wu was on the Harvard team (with Johnny Ho and Calvin Deng) that won third prize at the 40th annual ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM-ICPC World Finals) in Phuket, Thailand; the team earned the North American Champion Title and a gold medal, solving 10 of 13 problems. (https://seas.harvard.edu/news/2016/05/students-place-third-international-programming-contest) - Scott Wu, A.B. '19 (undecided), was listed as a member of the Harvard SEAS team alongside applied math concentrator Johnny Ho, A.B. '18, and math concentrator Calvin Deng, A.B. '17. (https://seas.harvard.edu/news/2016/05/students-place-third-international-programming-contest) - The Harvard team, coached by Jelani Nelson and Robert Walton '66, won the ACM-ICPC regional competition, defeating MIT and other universities; they were the only team to solve all eight problems. (https://seas.harvard.edu/news/2016/05/students-place-third-international-programming-contest) - Represented Harvard in the International Collegiate Programming Contest. (https://stripe.com/ae/customers/cognition-scott-wu) - Lunchclub was founded in 2016. (https://lsvp.com/company/lunchclub/) - MemSQL Start[c]UP 2.0: rank 4, score 3110. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:scott_wu) - IOI 2014: Gold medal, rank 1-3, score 600/600. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:scott_wu) - Worked as software engineer at Addepar. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Wu) - HMMT: Champion. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Wu) - Scott Wu competed for the United States of America at IOI 2014, scoring 600 (100.00%), ranking 1/311 (100.00% relative), and winning Gold. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/2686) - IOI 2013: Gold medal, rank 5, score 554/600. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:scott_wu) - Scott Wu competed for the United States of America at IOI 2013, scoring 554 (92.33%), ranking 5/299 (98.66% relative), and winning Gold. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/2686) - IOI 2012: Gold medal, rank 22, score 376/600. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:scott_wu) - Won three gold medals at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Wu) - IOI: 3 Gold (2012, 2013 and 2014) (First place overall in 2014) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Wu) - Scott Wu competed for the United States of America at IOI 2012, scoring 376 (62.67%), ranking 22/310 (93.23% relative), and winning Gold. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/2686) - Became individual champion in Mathcounts (representing Louisiana) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Wu) - Became a champion in MATHCOUNTS. (https://stripe.com/ae/customers/cognition-scott-wu) - Entered competing in the ninth-grade division and won first place. (https://colossus.com/article/scott-wu-tapes-cognition/) - Competed in a middle-school math competition; his name was not called at the award ceremony. (https://colossus.com/article/scott-wu-tapes-cognition/) - Codeforces: Legendary Grandmaster (peak rating 3350) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Wu) - Attended Harvard University for two years before dropping out. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Wu) - Scott Wu's Codeforces profile is scott_wu. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/2686) - Scott Wu's TopCoder profile is scott_wu. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/2686) - scott_wu is a Legendary Grandmaster on Codeforces. (https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/83203) - Competed on the US IOI team. (https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/83203) - Competed on the Harvard ICPC team. (https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/83203) - Cofounder of a company called Lunchclub (lunchclub.ai) (https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/83203) - Won first place in the country at MathCounts, the premier national middle-school competition. (https://colossus.com/article/scott-wu-tapes-cognition/) - Won his first of three gold medals at the IOI; teammates included Alexandr Wang, Johnny Ho, and Jesse Zhang (founders of Scale AI, Perplexity, and Decagon, respectively) (https://colossus.com/article/scott-wu-tapes-cognition/) - Described as the greatest American gold-medalist of all time at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) (https://colossus.com/article/scott-wu-tapes-cognition/) - Walden Yan, co-founder of Cognition and another IOI gold-medalist, was an IOI teammate. (https://colossus.com/article/scott-wu-tapes-cognition/) - Steven Hao, the third Cognition co-founder and former IOI teammate, gave Wu a shortlisted Putnam problem and challenged him to solve it with pen and paper in under two hours; Wu did it by thinking aloud, without touching the pen, in 90 seconds. (https://colossus.com/article/scott-wu-tapes-cognition/) - Challenged Peter Thiel and Napoleon Ta, his biggest investors, to chess and poker to win better terms for his company. (https://colossus.com/article/scott-wu-tapes-cognition/) - Showed up to a Founders Fund-hosted Super Smash Bros. Melee LAN party and beat Mango, the first of the Five Gods. (https://colossus.com/article/scott-wu-tapes-cognition/) - Founder and CEO of Cognition, an AI coding agent lab. (https://colossus.com/article/scott-wu-tapes-cognition/) - Cognition co-founders named: Walden Yan and Steven Hao. (https://colossus.com/article/scott-wu-tapes-cognition/) - Cognition's flagship product is Devin, an autonomous AI software engineer that runs on its own machine, takes coding tasks, works through existing codebases, tests and debugs its own work, and produces pull requests for human review. (https://colossus.com/article/scott-wu-tapes-cognition/) - Cognition is doubling usage of Devin every eight weeks and hit $445 million of revenue run rate in its first 18 months of service. (https://colossus.com/article/scott-wu-tapes-cognition/) - Devin is the agent of choice for enterprises from the U.S. Army to Goldman Sachs and Mercedes-Benz. (https://colossus.com/article/scott-wu-tapes-cognition/) - Cognition, whose customer base a year and a half ago was zero, is raising at a valuation around $25 billion. (https://colossus.com/article/scott-wu-tapes-cognition/) - Won three gold medals at the International Olympiad in Informatics. (https://stripe.com/ae/customers/cognition-scott-wu) - Cognition is an applied AI lab. (https://stripe.com/ae/customers/cognition-scott-wu) - Cognition recently acquired Windsurf, maker of a leading agentic coding IDE. (https://stripe.com/ae/customers/cognition-scott-wu) - Heard news of a deal between Google and Windsurf on Friday; reached out cold that evening. (https://stripe.com/ae/customers/cognition-scott-wu) - Got to the handshake agreement with Windsurf that Saturday. (https://stripe.com/ae/customers/cognition-scott-wu) - Pulled an all-nighter Sunday night to figure out the legal side. (https://stripe.com/ae/customers/cognition-scott-wu) - Got the Windsurf deal signed on Monday at 9:00 a.m. (https://stripe.com/ae/customers/cognition-scott-wu) - Windsurf's core research and products engineering team went to Google; all other functions were entirely intact. (https://stripe.com/ae/customers/cognition-scott-wu) - Scott Wu is CTO & Co-Founder of Lunchclub. (https://lsvp.com/company/lunchclub/) - Lunchclub is private. (https://lsvp.com/company/lunchclub/) - Vladimir Novakovski is CEO & Co-Founder of Lunchclub. (https://lsvp.com/company/lunchclub/) - Lunchclub is an AI superconnector. (https://lsvp.com/company/lunchclub/) - Cognition raised a $21 million Series A led by Founders Fund. (https://cognition.ai/blog/introducing-devin) - Cognition is described as an applied AI lab focused on reasoning, building AI teammates. (https://cognition.ai/blog/introducing-devin) - Previous roles include Co-Founder and CTO at Lunchclub; Software Engineer at Addepar. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-wu-8b94ab96) - Education history includes Economics, Harvard University. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-wu-8b94ab96) - Previous roles include Co-Founder and CEO at Cognition; Co-Founder and CTO at Lunchclub; Software Engineer at Addepar. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-wu-8b94ab96) - Location is San Francisco, California, United States. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-wu-8b94ab96) ## Experience - Co-Founder and CEO at Cognition (Nov 2023 - Present) - Co-Founder and CTO at Lunchclub - San Francisco Bay Area (Jun 2017 - Jun 2022) - Software Engineer at Addepar (May 2014 - Aug 2015) ## Education - Harvard University - Economics ## Sources - https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-wu-8b94ab96 - https://cognition.com/blog/corridor-joining-cognition - https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf - https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/29/cognitions-scott-wu-says-ai-coding-agents-shouldnt-replace-humans/ - https://cognition.com/blog/interaction - https://cheekypint.substack.com/p/cognition-ceo-scott-wu-on-acquiring - https://x.com/ScottWu46 - https://cognition.ai/blog/introducing-devin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-wu-8b94ab96?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAABRcyU0B3eVfSh_wWQgM7w3CZRywJOf28G8 - https://lsvp.com/company/lunchclub/ - https://colossus.com/article/scott-wu-tapes-cognition/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Wu - https://seas.harvard.edu/news/2016/05/students-place-third-international-programming-contest - https://x.com/ScottWu46/status/2105360290993115469 - https://cognition.com/blog/series-d - https://cognition.ai/blog/windsurf - https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/2686 - https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:scott_wu - https://stripe.com/ae/customers/cognition-scott-wu - https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/83203 Researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-04. Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people/scott-wu · Everyone at Cognition: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people