# Steven Hao ![Steven Hao](/resources/cognition/portraits/steven-hao.webp) Co-founder & CTO of Cognition (Devin, Windsurf); IOI gold medalist; ex-Scale AI Cognition United States ## At Cognition - Role: Co-Founder (Leadership) - Joined: Nov 2023 - How they joined: Directly - Before Cognition: Software Engineer, Self-employed - Olympiads: IOI gold 2014, silver 2013 (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/olympiads/steven-hao-olp-365211d427d45942a95f) - Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: A Simple Proof of the Cayley Formula… (2013); An Elementary Proof of the Cayley Formula… (2014); MIT ZERO (MIT) 2016; United States of America IOI team 2014; United States of America IOI team 2013; Scale AI; MIT (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together) ## Identity - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-hao-160b9638 - X: @stevenkplus1 - GitHub: https://github.com/stevenhao - Domain: cognition.ai ## Notes - Posted about the Dioxus team, saying features coming in the next few weeks will unlock significant new ways of using Devin, and crediting @jkelleyrtp and the rest of the Dioxus team. (https://x.com/stevenkplus1/status/2098112981460771019) - Cognition acquired Windsurf (Codeium's IDE) in July 2025; the Dioxus Rust framework team joined Cognition in September 2026. Hao publicly welcomed both and teased new Devin capabilities built with the Dioxus team. (https://x.com/stevenkplus1/status/2098112981460771019) - His 2026 posts and talks keep returning to 'delegating responsibilities, not tasks', Devin automations, and Devin Security. (https://x.com/stevenkplus1/status/2089422819654525315) - Gave a June 2026 developer talk describing a progression from autocomplete to chat to agents, and Devin's ability to review a change, test a feature, deploy it and watch what happens. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - In May 2026 said he had built an AI security incident tracker. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - Quoted speaking in 2026 about delegating responsibilities rather than tasks. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - Is CTO of Cognition. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - Said Cognition uses Devin in its own engineering process, creating a feedback loop, and that the small engineering team could do more because of that use. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - His GitHub profile (stevenkplus/stevenhao) has pinned projects including a web version of the card game Set and a crossword site. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - Handed Scott Wu a shortlisted Putnam mathematics problem and challenged him to solve it with pen and paper; Wu reportedly reasoned through it aloud in about 90 seconds. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - Cognition introduced Devin publicly in March 2024, an AI system that could plan, write and test software. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - Cofounded Cognition in 2023 with Scott Wu and Walden Yan. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - Joined Scale AI as an early engineer after MIT, working across its product suite including sensor fusion for autonomous vehicles and machine learning. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - Member of the MIT Programming Team that earned silver at the World Finals of the ACM's 40th annual International College Programming Contest (ICPC) in Phuket, Thailand; teammates were captain Aleksandar Zlateski, Brian Chen, and Andrew He; team led by CSAIL principal investigator Martin Rinard. (https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/mit-team-earns-silver-acms-global-programming-competition) - Won gold medal at the 2014 International Olympiad in Informatics, finishing sixth among 311 contestants. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - Won silver medal at the 2013 International Olympiad in Informatics in Brisbane as part of the U.S. team; photographed third from the left with teammates Joshua Brakensiek, Johnny Ho and Scott Wu. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - Hao, Scott Wu and Walden Yan all came out of the US competitive-programming pipeline (USACO camp to IOI); Hao and Wu were IOI 2013 teammates in Brisbane. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - Studied computer science and mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2014 to 2018. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - Is CTO of Cognition. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - Said Cognition uses Devin in its own engineering process, creating a feedback loop, and that the small engineering team could do more because of that use. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - His GitHub profile (stevenkplus/stevenhao) has pinned projects including a web version of the card game Set and a crossword site. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - Handed Scott Wu a shortlisted Putnam mathematics problem and challenged him to solve it with pen and paper; Wu reportedly reasoned through it aloud in about 90 seconds. (https://yespress.io/steven-hao) - Gave a talk titled 'Taste in Software Development' at a GitNation event. (https://gitnation.com/contents/taste-in-software-development) - CTO and co-founder of Cognition. (https://gitnation.com/contents/taste-in-software-development) - Has been a software engineer for about 20 years. (https://gitnation.com/contents/taste-in-software-development) - Cognition is described as a two-year-old company with 50 engineers, half a billion in revenue, valued at $26 billion. (https://gitnation.com/contents/taste-in-software-development) - Cognition builds the product Devon, an AI software engineer. (https://gitnation.com/contents/taste-in-software-development) - Predicts English will become the source of truth in software engineering. (https://gitnation.com/contents/taste-in-software-development) - Competed on team 'team usa' at Google Hash Code 2022, rank 27, with teammates ecnerwala, ksun48, and scottwu, score 1302657. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:aceofdiamonds) - B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics, MIT. (https://app.alphastar.academy/people/shao/) - Competed on the MIT team (MIT ZERO) at the ACM-ICPC 2016 World Finals, winning a Silver medal, rank 6, with teammates Andrew He and Brian Chen. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:aceofdiamonds) - Competed for Massachusetts Institute of Technology team 'MIT ZERO' at the ACM-ICPC 2016 World Finals. (https://cphof.org/university/Massachusetts%20Institute%20of%20Technology) - International Collegiate Programming Contest, MIT team member, 6th place. (https://app.alphastar.academy/people/shao/) - Placed 12th at MemSQL Start[c]UP 2.0 with score 2310. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:aceofdiamonds) - Competed in IOI 2014, winning a Gold medal, rank 6, score 525/600. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:aceofdiamonds) - International Olympiad in Informatics Gold medal. (https://app.alphastar.academy/people/shao/) - Competed at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) 2014 for the United States of America, scoring 525 (87.50%), rank 6/311 (98.39%), winning Gold. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/3113) - Competed in IOI 2013, winning a Silver medal, rank 52 (52-54), score 418/600. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:aceofdiamonds) - International Olympiad in Informatics Silver medal. (https://app.alphastar.academy/people/shao/) - Public headline says "Co-Founder at Cognition". (https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-hao-160b9638) - A-Star Alumnus. (https://app.alphastar.academy/people/shao/) - A-Star Instructor. (https://app.alphastar.academy/people/shao/) - Code Forces International Master. (https://app.alphastar.academy/people/shao/) - Software engineer, Scale AI. (https://app.alphastar.academy/people/shao/) - CodeForces profile handle is stevenkplus. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/3113) - TopCoder profile handle is aceofdiamonds. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/3113) - Kattis profile username is steven-hao. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/3113) - Codeforces profile handle: stevenkplus. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:aceofdiamonds) - Topcoder profile handle: aceofdiamonds. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:aceofdiamonds) - IOI profile ID: 3113. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:aceofdiamonds) - Country: United States. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:aceofdiamonds) - Graduated from MIT. (https://scale.com/blog/scale-engineering-team) - Previously had stints at Jane Street, DE Shaw, and Quora. (https://scale.com/blog/scale-engineering-team) - Received a gold medal at IOI. (https://scale.com/blog/scale-engineering-team) - Received top honors at programming competitions including Codeforces and ACM-ICPC. (https://scale.com/blog/scale-engineering-team) - Personal project: collaborative crossword site Down For A Cross. (https://scale.com/blog/scale-engineering-team) - Personal project: web implementation of Set. (https://scale.com/blog/scale-engineering-team) - CTO and co-founder of Cognition. (https://gitnation.com/contents/taste-in-software-development) - Has been a software engineer for about 20 years. (https://gitnation.com/contents/taste-in-software-development) - Cognition is described as a two-year-old company with 50 engineers, half a billion in revenue, valued at $26 billion. (https://gitnation.com/contents/taste-in-software-development) - Cognition builds the product Devon, an AI software engineer. (https://gitnation.com/contents/taste-in-software-development) - Predicts English will become the source of truth in software engineering. (https://gitnation.com/contents/taste-in-software-development) - After the IOI win he enrolled at MIT, majoring in computer science and mathematics. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - At ScaleAI he worked in Scale 3D Sensor Fusion, Scale Image, and Scale Video, and eventually led the technical development of Mapping. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - He has not spoken publicly about his time at ScaleAI or what led him to exit. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - Cognition raised a Series E in September 2026 valuing it at $48 billion, nearly doubling its May valuation of $26 billion. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - Cognition announced a multi-year strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services in September 2026 to make it easier for enterprise customers to deploy Devin within AWS environments. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - Hao said users of Devin delegate responsibilities, not just tasks. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - Hao described Devin as writing, reviewing, testing/QAing, deploying, and monitoring code, and acting as first responder to incidents. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - Hao said Cognition is a two-year-old company with 50 engineers, half a billion of revenue, and a $26 billion valuation, attributing the leverage to Devin. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - Hao said Devin augments the engineering team so a lean team can do the work of a much larger organization, and that being the biggest users of the product keeps them on top of it. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - Cognition announced plans earlier in 2026 to expand its business across Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Korea. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - Started a new position as Co-Founder at Cognition. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/steven-hao-160b9638_im-happy-to-share-that-im-starting-a-new-activity-7173347941963796480-9ItZ) - He founded Cognition with Scott Wu and Walden Yan in 2024. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - He left ScaleAI (a Meta- and Amazon-backed company) in 2024 to found Cognition. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - Cognition's primary product is Devin, an autonomous software engineer that writes and repairs code, launched as a demo in 2024. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - In 2018, shortly after graduating, he joined ScaleAI as a software developer. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - Authored a commit titled 'create Poll model' in the sipb/sphinx repository. (https://github.com/sipb/sphinx) - Made the latest commit to crosswordsio, 'fix reference bug in editor' (https://github.com/stevenhao/crosswordsio) - Made the initial commit to crosswordsio. (https://github.com/stevenhao/crosswordsio) - Authored the open source repository stevenhao/crosswordsio (a crossword game web app), hosted at crosswords.stevenhao.com. (https://github.com/stevenhao/crosswordsio) - He won the International Olympiad in Informatics, taking home the gold medal in 2014. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - Steven Hao is listed among the competitive programmers involved with Cognition; his Codeforces handle is stevenkplus (Grandmaster). (https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/127049) - Steven Hao's IOI record is listed as 1 Gold and 1 Sliver (as spelled in the post). (https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/127049) - GitHub username is stevenhao; profile lists 130 followers and 26 following; location San Francisco, CA. (https://github.com/stevenhao) - Listed as a member of the GitHub organization @scaleapi. (https://github.com/stevenhao) - Listed as a member of the GitHub organizations downforacross and doubleblind-xyz. (https://github.com/stevenhao) - Pinned repository downforacross/downforacross.com is described as the web frontend for downforacross.com and a continuation of stevenhao/crosswordsio. (https://github.com/stevenhao) - Authored the open source repository stevenhao/set, a web implementation of the game of set and some variants. (https://github.com/stevenhao) - Authored the open source repository stevenhao/ctfd, a command line tool that takes you to your most recently used directory. (https://github.com/stevenhao) - Pinned repositories include meteor/meteor, JuliaLang/julia, and lichess-org/lila. (https://github.com/stevenhao) - Sponsoring GitHub user @wuweiweiwu. (https://github.com/stevenhao) - Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer of Cognition AI. (https://gne.mplify.net/speaker/steven-hao/) - CTO and Cofounder of Cognition AI, makers of Devin, the first AI software engineer. (https://gne.mplify.net/speaker/steven-hao/) - Before founding Cognition, was an early engineer at Scale AI working on their full suite of products including sensor fusion for autonomous vehicles and machine learning. (https://gne.mplify.net/speaker/steven-hao/) - Studied Mathematics at MIT. (https://gne.mplify.net/speaker/steven-hao/) - Holds a gold medal from the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) (https://gne.mplify.net/speaker/steven-hao/) - Codeforces handle stevenkplus, listed as Steven Hao from San Jose, United States, from MIT. (https://codeforces.com/profile/stevenkplus) - Codeforces rank Grandmaster; contest rating 2542, max international grandmaster 2874. (https://codeforces.com/profile/stevenkplus) - Registered on Codeforces 15 years ago; last visit 14 months ago. (https://codeforces.com/profile/stevenkplus) - Solved 2190 problems for all time on Codeforces. (https://codeforces.com/profile/stevenkplus) - Has 7 Codeforces blog entries. (https://codeforces.com/profile/stevenkplus) - After the IOI win he enrolled at MIT, majoring in computer science and mathematics. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - At ScaleAI he worked in Scale 3D Sensor Fusion, Scale Image, and Scale Video, and eventually led the technical development of Mapping. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - He has not spoken publicly about his time at ScaleAI or what led him to exit. (https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html) - Listed as a contributor to crosswordsio under the name Steven Hao (GitHub user stevenhao) (https://github.com/stevenhao/crosswordsio) - Crosswordsio development moved to github.com/downforacross/downforacross.com. (https://github.com/stevenhao/crosswordsio) - GitHub username is stevenhao. (https://github.com/sipb/sphinx) - Previous roles include Software Engineer at Self-employed; Software Engineer at Scale AI; Software Engineering Intern at Meteor Development Group; Software Engineering Internship at Scale API; Quant Intern at The D. E. Shaw Group; Infrastructure Intern at Dropbox; Trading Intern at Jane Street; Software Engineering Intern at Quora. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-hao-160b9638) - Education history includes Bachelor’s Degree, Computer Science, Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-hao-160b9638) - Location is United States. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-hao-160b9638) ## Experience - Co-Founder at Cognition - New York, New York, United States (Nov 2023 - Present): Building the future - Software Engineer at Self-employed (May 2022 - Mar 2024) - Software Engineer at Scale AI - San Francisco Bay Area (Jan 2018 - May 2022) - Software Engineering Intern at Meteor Development Group - San Francisco Bay Area (Jun 2017 - Aug 2017) - Software Engineering Internship at Scale API - San Francisco Bay Area (Mar 2017 - May 2017) - Quant Intern at The D. E. Shaw Group (May 2016 - Aug 2016) - Infrastructure Intern at Dropbox (May 2015 - Aug 2015) - Trading Intern at Jane Street (Jan 2015 - Jan 2015) - Software Engineering Intern at Quora (May 2014 - Aug 2014) ## Education - Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Bachelor’s Degree, Computer Science, Mathematics - (Jan 2014 - Jan 2018) ## Sources - https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-hao-160b9638 - https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/3113 - https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/30-old-became-youngest-member-155417252.html - https://x.com/stevenkplus1 - https://github.com/stevenhao - https://scale.com/blog/scale-engineering-team - https://codeforces.com/profile/stevenkplus - https://cognition.ai/blog/windsurf - https://app.alphastar.academy/people/shao/ - https://yespress.io/steven-hao - https://cphof.org/university/Massachusetts%20Institute%20of%20Technology - https://github.com/downforacross/downforacross.com - https://github.com/stevenhao/crosswordsio - https://github.com/sipb/sphinx - https://gitnation.com/contents/taste-in-software-development - https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/mit-team-earns-silver-acms-global-programming-competition - https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/127049 - https://usaco.org/index.php?page=finalists13 - https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:aceofdiamonds - https://x.com/stevenkplus1/status/2098112981460771019 - https://x.com/stevenkplus1/status/2089422819654525315 - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/steven-hao-160b9638_im-happy-to-share-that-im-starting-a-new-activity-7173347941963796480-9ItZ - https://gne.mplify.net/speaker/steven-hao/ Researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-04. Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people/steven-hao · Everyone at Cognition: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people