Scott Wu (born 1997) is an American entrepreneur who is co-founder of Cognition AI and Lunchclub. He is also a competitive programmer who won three gold medals (placing first in 2014) 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) and came third place in the 2021 Google Code Jam.

Background

Wu was born in 1997 in the state of Louisiana. He attended

Baton Rouge Magnet High School Baton Rouge Magnet High School (BRMHS or Baton Rouge High) is a public magnet school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States, founded in 1880. It is part of the East Baton Rouge Parish School System with a student body of approximately 1500 stud ...

. Growing up Wu competed in competitions related to programming and mathematics. He won three gold medals (placing first in 2014) at IOI. He also competed in Mathcounts and became individual champion in 2011. Wu attended

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

where he graduated in 2019 with an A.B. in Economics. While at Harvard, he was part of the team representing it in the 2016

International Collegiate Programming Contest The International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) is an annual multi-tiered competitive programming competition among the universities of the world. Directed by ICPC Executive Director and Baylor Professor William B. Poucher, the ICPC oper ...

(ICPC) which won a gold medal and came third place overall.

Career

From to 2014 to 2015, Wu worked as software engineer at Addepar. In 2017, Wu co-founded Lunchclub and was its CTO until 2022 when he left to pursue different interests. Wu was listed in 2020 edition of ''Forbes'' 30 Under 30 for co-founding Lunchclub. In 2021, Wu came third place in the 2021 Google Code Jam. In 2023, Wu co-founded Cognition AI which 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 ...

. It raised $21 million in funding from

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 ...

Achievements

Competitive programming

A more comprehensive list of achievements can be found at the Competitive Programming Hall Of Fame website. *

: 3 Gold (2012, 2013 and 2014) (First place overall in 2014) *

(Representing Harvard): 1 Gold (2016) (Third place overall) * Google Code Jam: Third place (2021) *

Topcoder Open Topcoder Open (TCO) was an annual design, software development, data science and competitive programming championship organized by Topcoder, and hosted in different venues around the United States. In the first two years, 2001 and 2002, the tour ...

Algorithm: Third place (2017) * Codeforces: Legendary Grandmaster (peak rating 3350)

Mathematics

* HMMT: Champion (2014) * Mathcounts (Representing Louisiana): Individual champion (2011)

Family

Wu has an older brother named Neal. Similar to Wu, Neal also has a competitive programming background and attended Harvard University graduating in 2014. His competitive programming achievements include winning three gold medals at the IOI, winning a team silver medal at the ICPC and coming second place in the 2012 Google Code Jam. Neal previously worked at Facebook and Google. He currently works with Wu at Cognition AI.

References

External links

;Online coding profiles *

Topcoder Topcoder (formerly TopCoder) is a crowdsourcing company with an open global community of designers, developers, data scientists, and competitive programmers. Topcoder pays community members for their work on the projects and sells community s ...

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* Codeforces
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Wu, Scott 1997 births 21st-century American businesspeople American technology chief executives Baton Rouge Magnet High School alumni Businesspeople from Louisiana Competitive programmers Harvard College alumni Living people