Cognition AI, Inc. (also known as Cognition Labs),

doing business as A trade name, trading name, or business name is a pseudonym used by companies that do not operate under their registered company name. The term for this type of alternative name is fictitious business name. Registering the fictitious name with ...

Cognition, is an

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

(AI) company headquartered in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

in the US State of

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. The company developed

Devin AI Devin AI is an autonomous artificial intelligence assistant tool created by Cognition Labs. Branded as an "AI software developer", the demo tool is designed to complete software development tasks. The tool has received praise, concern, and skept ...

, an AI

software developer Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

. The company is known for hiring

competitive programmers Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game). Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, individ ...

Background

Cognition was founded in November 2023 by

Scott Wu Scott Wu (born 1997) is an Americans, American entrepreneur who is co-founder of Cognition AI and Lunchclub. He is also a Competitive programming, competitive programmer who won three gold medals (placing first in 2014) at the International Oly ...

, Walden Yan, and Steven Hao. All three were

who won gold medals at the

International Olympiad in Informatics The International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is an annual competitive programming competition and one of the International Science Olympiads Student competition, for secondary school students. The first IOI was held in 1989 in Pravetz, Bulgar ...

(IOI). Originally the company was focused on cryptocurrency before moving to AI as it became a trend in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

following the release of

ChatGPT ChatGPT is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI and released on November 30, 2022. It uses large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4o as well as other Multimodal learning, multimodal models to create human-like re ...

. In March 2024, Cognition released a demo of its AI coding tool,

which was said to be able to perform the tasks of a software engineer. 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 Gennady Korotkevich (, Hienadź Karatkievič, ; born 25 September 1994) is a Belarusian competitive sport programmer who has won major international competitions since the age of 11, as well as numerous national competitions. Widely regarded ...

and

Andrew He Andrew He (born 1997) is an American competitive programmer and the winner of the 2021 Facebook Hacker Cup. Background He was born in 1997. Starting from sixth grade, he participated in various mathematics competitions such as the America ...

. Wu stated this background gives Cognition an edge in AI competition as teaching an AI to be a programmer is a very deep algorithmic problem that requires the system to make complex decisions. With regards to fundraising, the company was backed by

Peter Thiel Peter Andreas Thiel (; born 11 October 1967) is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Facebook. According ...

Founders Fund Founders Fund is an American venture capital fund formed in 2005 and based in San Francisco. The fund has roughly $17 billion in total assets under management as of 2025. Founders Fund was the first institutional investor in Space Exploration T ...

which provided $21 million of funding to it in early 2024 valuing the company at $350 million. In April 2024, Founders Fund led a $175 million investment into Cognition valuing the company at $2 billion making it a

Unicorn The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since Classical antiquity, antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn (anatomy), horn projecting from its forehead. In European literature and art, the unico ...

. In May 2024, it was announced that Cognition partnered with

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

to integrate Devin AI and would be powered by

Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure, or just Azure ( /ˈæʒər, ˈeɪʒər/ ''AZH-ər, AY-zhər'', UK also /ˈæzjʊər, ˈeɪzjʊər/ ''AZ-ure, AY-zure''), is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It has management, access and development of ...

. It received a mixed reaction from users online as while Devin AI was considered promising, there were concerns about job displacement as well as the actual capability of Devin AI. In March 2025, Cognition reached a valuation of $4 Billion after a new funding round led by

Joe Lonsdale Joseph Lonsdale (born ) is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He co-founded companies including Palantir Technologies, Addepar, and OpenGov, and co-founded and serves as the managing partner at the technology investment firm 8VC ...

's 8VC. In April 2025, Cognition released Devin 2.0, which features an

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

designed for AI agent collaboration. It comes with a new plan starting at $20.

References

External links

* {{Generative AI 2023 establishments in California 2023 in San Francisco American companies established in 2016 Artificial intelligence associations