Artificial Intelligence · Profile from AI Research Companion
Cognition AI
The San Francisco company, founded in 2023 by competitive programmers Scott Wu, Steven Hao and Walden Yan, that coined the "AI software engineer" with Devin, an autonomous coding agent unveiled on 12 March 2024 in a demo that made it famous and drew accusations of exaggeration. Cognition does not train frontier models; it builds the agent harness, its own smaller SWE models and the product around models from labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI. It priced Devin at $500 a month (December 2024), cut the entry price to $20 with Devin 2.0 (April 2025), and in July 2025 bought what was left of Windsurf after Google hired its founders — adding an editor, $82m of ARR and >350 enterprise customers (Cognition). Its valuation rose from ~$350m (early 2024, reported) to $2bn (April 2024), ~$4bn (March 2025), $10.2bn (September 2025) and $26bn (Series D, May 2026, reported), with ARR of ~$492m reported around the Series D, and it was in talks at ≥$40bn in August 2026 (Bloomberg, reported). On 2 June 2026 it renamed Windsurf Devin Desktop (reported).
At a glance
- Founded
- 2023 (sources differ: November per Wikipedia and the founders' LinkedIn profiles via Turing Post, August per some profiles — verify; re-checked Nov 2026), by Scott Wu (CEO), Steven Hao (CTO) and Walden Yan (chief product officer)
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California
- Ownership / structure
- Private. Investors include Founders Fund, 8VC, Lux Capital, General Catalyst, Ribbit Capital, Atreides Management, Elad Gil, Definition Capital and others (reported); former Windsurf shareholders received Cognition consideration (terms undisclosed)
- Leadership (2026)
- Scott Wu (CEO); Steven Hao (CTO); Walden Yan (CPO); Jeff Wang (former Windsurf interim CEO, enterprise role, reported; verify)
- AI products
- Devin (autonomous cloud agent; GA December 2024; Devin 2.0 April 2025); Devin Wiki and Devin Search (2025); Windsurf editor (acquired July 2025; renamed Devin Desktop June 2026, reported); SWE model family (SWE-1 from Windsurf, May 2025; SWE-1.5, October 2025, reported; SWE-2, September 2026, reported — verify)
- Scale
- Devin ARR ~$1m (September 2024) → ~$73m (June 2025) (company figures, reported); Windsurf $82m ARR at acquisition (July 2025); combined ARR ~$492m around May 2026 (reported); unconfirmed later claims of ~$900m (August 2026) and >$1bn (September 2026); ~200 employees (March 2026, per Wikipedia citing the San Francisco Standard — looks low given the ~200–230 Windsurf staff absorbed in 2025, before buyouts; verify)
- Capital raised
- ~$21m at ~$350m (early 2024, reported); $175m at $2bn led by Founders Fund (April 2024, reported); round led by 8VC at ~$4bn (March 2025, reported); ~$400m at $10.2bn post-money led by Founders Fund (8 September 2025, reported); >$1bn Series D at $26bn post-money co-led by Lux, General Catalyst and 8VC (27 May 2026, reported); talks at ≥$40bn (August 2026, reported; ~$47bn in one later report, verify)
- Key partnerships
- Model suppliers (Anthropic, OpenAI and others); enterprise customers including Goldman Sachs (pilot, July 2025) and Mercedes-Benz (April 2026, secondary source, verify); Microsoft Azure availability (2024, reported, verify)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- Founding and the Olympiad team (2023); the Devin demo and the credibility backlash (2024, failure of credibility); the Founders Fund round at $2bn (2024–25); Devin pricing from $500 to $20 (2024–25); the Windsurf acquisition (2025); the Windsurf layoffs and buyouts (2025, reputational failure); the $10.2bn round and enterprise deployments (2025); Devin Desktop and the Agent Command Center (2026); the $26bn Series D and the $40bn-plus talks (2026)
9 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2023
Founding and the Olympiad Team
Founding
2024
Devin Demo and the Credibility Backlash
Launch — with a failure of credibility
2024
Devin Pricing from 500 to 20
Launch / pricing change
2024
Founders Fund Round at 2bn
Funding round
2025
10bn Round and Enterprise Deployments
Funding round / enterprise go-to-market
2025
Windsurf Acquisition
Acquisition
2025
Windsurf Layoffs and Buyouts
Restructuring (post-acquisition) — a reputational failure
2026
26bn Series D and the 40bn Talks
Funding round
2026
Devin Desktop and the Agent Command Center
Rebrand / product launch