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Scott Wu

Co-Founder and CEO, Cognition

Search every verified Scott Wu interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Scott Wu, co-founder and CEO of Cognition, spoke at the Runtime 2026 conference in October, where he discussed the evolution of AI agents and their increasing autonomy. He described a shift from pattern-matching to models with internal world models, and outlined trends including agents moving from tab completion to owning outcomes, aggressive model routing, and agent-started work, noting that 91% of Cognition’s internal Devin sessions now begin without human initiation. He also commented on the pace of AI progress, referencing a model solving the AIME math exam and the recent AI-assisted solution to the Navier-Stokes problem, which he called "absurd." In a September interview, Wu discussed his investment philosophy, stating that he does not claim to know which AI sector will accrue the most value and prefers a balanced approach across technology, broad market exposure, and U.S. Treasury bonds. He acknowledged experiencing "AI psychosis" periodically, saying that while the world will change significantly, some concerns are overblown. He also noted that Brazil has been a major early adopter of Cognition’s product, with users calling it "Divino."

Recent appearances

  • It's time to be ambitious | Scott Wu Co-founder & CEO at Cognition, Runtime 2026

    October 09, 2026 · 📺 Modal

    A frog will starve next to a fly that isn’t moving. Scott Wu, CEO and co-founder of Cognition (creators of Devin), uses that to explain how AI went from pattern-matching instincts to models with real world models, and what that means for anyone building with them. Scott covers three trends: agents moving from tab completion to virtual employees who own outcomes, aggressive model routing, and the shift to agent-started work (91% of Cognition’s internal Devin sessions now start without a human). Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:21 Why frogs? 02:26 What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain 03:30 A ma…

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  • Scott Wu on AI, investments, and how he manages his own money

    September 22, 2026 · 📺 Decade Wealth

    Scott Wu is the founder and CEO of Cognition, the company behind Devin, the AI software engineer. In this conversation with Vitor Olivier, Scott talks about the evolution of artificial intelligence, the role of human judgment, and how he thinks about investing at a time of major technological change. They discuss why believing in AI growth doesn't mean an investor should try to pick a single winning company, the importance of maintaining a balanced portfolio, and how Scott allocates his own investments among technology, broad market exposure, and U.S. Treasury bonds. The conversation also c…

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  • GG Navier Stokes, Math Wars, Greg Brockman Joins, Scott Wu Joins, The Seufenator Joins

    September 08, 2026 · 📺 TBPN

    00:00:57 Math Wars 00:14:38 Astra Reactions 00:26:47 Trailer Zone 00:39:19 AI Job Boom Beats the Doom 00:52:57 𝕏 Timeline Reactions 01:02:27 Dan Wright discusses Armada’s mission to bring modular AI infrastructure to underserved regions as the “hyperscaler for the edge.” He highlights the company’s rapid growth, scalable Galleon data centers, use of stranded renewable energy, and focus on speed, scale, data sovereignty, and real-time edge computing. 01:12:07 Eric Seufert, founder of Mobile Dev Memo and an expert on mobile advertising and digital platforms, discusses the convergence of Netflix…

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  • Inside the Fastest-Growing Category in AI: Scott Wu, CEO of $26B Cognition

    July 27, 2026 · 📺 Sourcery with Molly O'Shea

    Scott Wu, CEO & Co-Founder of Cognition, joins Sourcery in Paris amid the RAISE AI Summit. Cognition is the applied AI lab behind Devin, the autonomous AI software engineer, and Devin Desktop, formerly Windsurf. The company has raised more than $2.5 billion, including a $1 billion round in May 2026 at a $26 billion valuation, while growing annualized revenue from roughly $37 million to $492 million in a year. Devin now writes roughly 95% of Cognition's own code, total code shipped has grown 7x in six months, and customer usage has increased 11x to 12x. We cover Cognition's acquisition of Wind…

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  • The Golden Age of Software Engineering | Scott Wu, Cognition | RAISE Summit 2026

    July 22, 2026 · 📺 RAISE Summit

    Scott Wu, CEO & Co-Founder of Cognition — the company behind Devin, the AI software engineer — takes the Master Stage in one of his first major European appearances to make the case that this is software engineering's golden age, not its end. Recorded live on the Master Stage at the Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, on July 8, 2026. Livestream powered by Cursor. RAISE Summit is Europe's leading AI gathering, bringing together 9,000+ founders, executives, investors, researchers and policymakers. Learn more: https://www.raisesummit.com Subscribe for every session from RAISE Summit 2026.

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  • The Future of Software & AI | Cognition’s Scott Wu

    June 28, 2026 · 📺 David Senra

    Scott Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Cognition, the company behind Devin, the world's first AI software engineer. Wu describes himself as "salty," a word he traces to second grade, when he competed in a seventh-grade math competition, lost, and never forgot it. Born in 1997 in Louisiana to a Chinese immigrant family, he grew up the little brother who hated losing at video games and turned that into a career. At the International Olympiad in Informatics he won three gold medals and placed first overall in 2014; he was the 2011 MathCounts national champion. He approaches building a company the…

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  • Scott Wu (Cognition AI) on Software Abundance and the Future of Software Engineering

    May 20, 2026 · 📺 Lux Capital

    What happens to software engineering when the constraint isn't engineers anymore — it's imagination? Cognition AI co-founder and CEO Scott Wu and Lux Capital Partner Brandon Reeves join for a fireside chat and Q&A at Cognition AI's San Francisco headquarters to discuss how Cognition is building towards a new era of software engineering, including scaling up AI infrastructure and agents inside Cognition AI. Scott on X: https://x.com/ScottWu46?lang=en Brandon on X: https://x.com/breeves08 Lux's Socials: https://x.com/Lux_Capital/   / lux-capital     / _luxcapital      / @lux_capital   http…

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  • Lux Capital CEO Brandon Reeves & Cognition CEO Scott Wu at Semafor World Economy

    April 29, 2026 · 📺 Semafor Events

    ... in the fullness of time uh Scott and Devon and the cognition team were entirely right about the form factor This is how it always is ...

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  • Why AI is a Superpower — Not a Death Sentence | Scott Wu, Russell Kaplan & Joe Lonsdale

    April 23, 2026 · 📺 Joe Lonsdale Clips

    Cognition founders Scott Wu and Russell Kaplan join Joe Lonsdale to discuss how AI agents like Devin are transforming software engineering, shifting the focus from manual implementation to high-level creative reasoning. Subscribe for more Joe Lonsdale Clips:    / @joelonsdaleclips   Joe Lonsdale is an American entrepreneur, investor & philanthropist. He has been a part of founding more than a dozen mission-driven companies, including Palantir, Addepar, OpenGov, Affinity, Epirus, Resilience Bio, and 8VC. Follow Joe on Twitter: https://x.com/jtlonsdale You can find his writings here: http…

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  • AI Genius Predicts the Next 3 Years

    April 11, 2026 · 📺 Joe Lonsdale

    Watch the full interview with Scott Wu & Russell Kaplan here:    • How AI Agents Are Creating 12X Productivit...   Scott Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Cognition AI, a three-time gold medalist at the International Olympiad in Informatics who previously co-founded the AI networking platform Lunchclub. Russell Kaplan is the founding president of Cognition AI, having begun his career as a machine learning engineer on Tesla's Autopilot team before co-founding and selling a video data company to Scale AI. Joe Lonsdale is an American entrepreneur, investor & philanthropist. He has been a part o…

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  • How AI Agents Are Creating 12X Productivity Gains

    March 27, 2026 · 📺 Joe Lonsdale

    Scott Wu & Russell Kaplan, co-founders of Cognition, are leading one of the fastest-growing, talent-dense AI companies. Their mission: make expert software engineering ubiquitous. What does a world of software abundance look like? How is Cognition delivering massive productivity gains inside some of the largest companies and organizations? And can AI finally modernize the broken, $100 billion government IT systems? We discuss these and other timely topics with Scott and Russell. Scott was a three-time gold medalist at the International Olympiad in Informatics and world champion at age 17. Af…

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  • Cognition CEO Scott Wu on Devin and the Next 12 Months for AI Agents

    October 27, 2025 · 📺 Lux Capital

    Scott Wu discusses the fundamental evolution of AI in coding and the future of software engineering. He describes the critical difference between a foundation model lab and an applied AI lab like Cognition, focusing on real-world engineering challenges such as processing large codebases, debugging Kubernetes logs, and teaching agents to use modern developer tools like Datadog. Scott predicts major advancements in autonomous AI agents over the next 12 months, specifically for automated testing, codebase re-architecting, and PR review. Subscribe to our Substack, Riskgaming, to stay on top of st…

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Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“The second thing I would say is doing a lot more model routing. And everyone's talking about model routing recently. It's hot obviously. I would say it's still very early. But as you can kind of see here, you don't really need the Navier Stokes guy to go and do everything. And I think roughly what we're going to get to is a point where the absolute frontier models are roughly running for about 2% of workloads, call i”

“In terms of finances and investing, the obvious thing is that I kind of have no idea because anybody who claims that they know everything about what's going to happen in AI has been wrong basically every time. The world's going to change a lot for sure. A lot of it is number one, I do think as a whole AI still has a long way to go. So thinking about what is the right way overall to be betting on AI in some form and n”

“I think it's sticking around. Yeah. I mean I think it's if anything it's going to be a bigger thing as time goes on because for a lot of these use cases the intelligence is is is really not the bottleneck anymore right and so so uh obviously it's been been another hot thing for the last few months but but I mean I would say it's like you know chat GBT for example new bigger smarter comes out you know smarter model co”

“I think it's actually insane. There's a lot of controversy and there's discussions arguments whatever but I feel like the most important thing to call is that guys we just solved Navier Stokes with AI. Like that is it's absurd and and and I don't think it's going to stop obviously. I mean I think the like uh you know what's funny? I actually have money and this is my this will be my only AI bear view that I ever expr”

“There's a world that folks sometimes talk about where there's the full recursive super intelligence and then everything is all owned by like a single entity, you know, or maybe there's two entities or something that there, you know, but then they have the um and it's like everything all collapses once you've solved AGI. You just take over the entire world and then there's just like one entity that rules the world. I ”

“I think on the one hand, I think relative to businesses and by the way, it's not just us. It's like our customers have seen this where similarly our customers in the last six months or so have also grown their usage in something in the range of like 11 to 12x of Devon. And the way I'd say it is yeah on the one hand I think you just like think about businesses of the past you think about the growth of all these tech c”

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