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| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Information technology |
| Founded | November 2023; 2 years ago (2023-11) |
| Founders |
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| Headquarters | San Francisco,California, United States |
Key people |
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| Products |
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Number of employees | 111 (Sept 2025) |
| Website | cognition |
Cognition AI, Inc. (also known asCognition Labs),doing business asCognition, is anartificial intelligence (AI) company headquartered inSan Francisco in theU.S. state ofCalifornia. The company developedDevin AI, an AIsoftware developer.
The company is known for hiringcompetitive programmers such asGennady Korotkevich andAndrew He.
Cognition was founded in August 2023 byScott Wu, Steven Hao, and Walden Yan.[1][2][3] All three werecompetitive programmers who won gold medals at theInternational Olympiad in Informatics (IOI).[3][4][5]
Originally, the company was focused on cryptocurrency, before moving to AI as it became a trend inSilicon Valley following the release ofChatGPT.[1][2]
In March 2024, Cognition released a demo of its AI coding tool,Devin AI, which was said to be able to perform the tasks of a software engineer.[2][3][4]
Cognition boasted that its 10-person team as of March 2024 has won a total of 10 IOI gold medals. Apart from its founders, other members of the team who are gold medalists include Wu's brother Neal,Gennady Korotkevich andAndrew He. Wu stated this background gives Cognition an edge in AI competition as teaching an AI to be a programmer is a very deepalgorithmic problem that requires the system to make complex decisions.[4][5][6]
The company was backed byPeter Thiel'sFounders Fund which provided $21 million in early 2024, valuing the company at $350 million.[2] In April 2024, Founders Fund led a $175 million investment into Cognition valuing the company at $2 billion making it aUnicorn.[1][3][7]
In May 2024, it was announced that Cognition partnered withMicrosoft to integrate Devin AI and would be powered byMicrosoft Azure. It received a mixed reaction from users online. While Devin AI was considered promising, there were concerns aboutjob displacement and the actual capabilities of Devin AI.[8]
In March 2025, Cognition reached a valuation of $4 billion after a new funding round led byJoe Lonsdale's8VC.[9]
In April 2025, Cognition released Devin 2.0, which features anintegrated development environment designed for AI agent collaboration. It comes with a new plan starting at $20.[10]
In July 2025, Cognition signed a definitive agreement to acquire Windsurf,[11] anagenticIDE, after the fallout from Google's $2.4 billionacquihire of their CEO and other senior employees.[12] After the acquisition, Cognition was valued at $10 billion in September 2025.[13]
