A few days back, Cognition Labs, a US-based startup, launched Devin AI which is being called the world’s first ‘fully autonomous AI software engineer’. Devin aims to take care of the software development life cycle and thus give engineers time to focus on important tasks and strive to achieve more ambitious goals. Let’s take a look at the masterminds behind this genius tool.
Highlights:
Meet the Masterminds
Cognition Labs is a small team with talented individuals across various domains. The founding team has a total of 10 medals in the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), a very famous competitive coding competition for secondary school students.
It includes leaders and innovators who have worked at the forefront of applied AI at companies like Cursor, Scale AI, Lunchclub, Modal, Google DeepMind, Waymo, and Nuro.
Who is the Creator of Devin AI?
Scott Wu, Founder and CEO of Cognition, is the main creator of Devin AI. He is the primary genius behind Devin and is regarded as the most skilled autonomous coding agent.
Here is what he said on X:
I first learned to program when I was 9 years old and fell in love with the ability to turn my ideas into reality. Now, teaching AI to code at @cognition_labs has been a dream come true. We've still got a long way to go; if this sounds like something you'd like to work on, please… https://t.co/wQeoQXsHhi
— Scott Wu (@ScottWu46) March 12, 2024
As a kid, he participated in multiple mathematics competitions and was the best in every one of them. The old video that went viral after the announcement of Devin shows Wu leading the competition at the 2010 Raytheon MATHCOUNTS National Competition. Wu was able to answer even before the host finished reading out the questions to the audience, thus showcasing his genius skills.
He is also one of the best competitive programmers, winning tons of contests on CodeForces, a competitive coding platform where users can solve problems and improve their programming skills. Wu boasts the title ‘Legendary Grandmaster’, something that very few people in the world can call themselves.
He has a current rating of 3297 with his highest overall score being 3350. All these factors outline the genius Wu is and it isn’t a surprise that he’s the one behind the groundbreaking product ‘Devin’.
Wu studied economics at the prestigious Harvard University before moving to San Fransisco to start his own company. From 2017 to 2022, he was the co-founder and CTO at LunchClub, a company that uses Al technology to create in-person lunch and coffee meetings to boost networking opportunities for the world’s professionals.
Wu, along with its two co-founders Steven Hao, the CTO, and Walden Yan, the chief product officer, founded Cognition Labs in November 2023. In March 2024, they launched their main invention- the autonomous software engineer “Devin” which broke the internet in a matter of hours.
Other Members
Scott Wu’s elder brother Neal Wu joined him in building Cognition Labs as a Human Engineer. Neal, similar to Scott, is also a math genius, having won various competitions in his childhood. He has been participating in various coding events since his teenage years. Neal, currently an International Grandmaster on CodeForces, has matched his brother by previously holding the Legendary Grandmaster title with a highest rating of 3147. He is a 3 time IOI Gold medalist, tied with Wu.
Neal Wu maintains a YouTube channel where he posts content regarding competitive programming and algorithms.
Neal has worked at several top tech companies like Facebook (now Meta), Google Brain, and Streem thus showing his vast real-world experience. He also served as a Head Teaching Fellow at Harvard University.
Delian, a partner at Founder’s Fund, tweeted the following about the brothers:
Scott & Neal Wu were legends in the competitive math world
— delian (@zebulgar) March 12, 2024
When I was in middle school I saw them win nationals several times while I watched from the crowd
Excited that FF has lead a round of $21m+ which will allow them to develop Devin
Not an AI-copilot but an AI-programmer! https://t.co/bPM8hNkBFR
Other members include co-founder Steven Hao, who worked as an engineer at Scale AI, a leading startup in training AI Systems. Fellow co-founder Walden Yan has requested Harvard University to keep his status “ambiguous” until recently. The main reason for this is that he hasn’t yet had a talk with his parents about dropping out of Harvard to pursue a role at Cognition. Both Hao and Yan are 1-time gold medalists at IOI events.
Scott said that the backgrounds of his team members will help Cognition beat the competition.
He said:
It’s almost like this game that we’ve all been playing in our minds for years, and now there’s this chance to code it into an AI system.
This shows the faith Scott has in this project and their product ‘Devin’ certainly backs his words.
Funding
Most recently, Cognition has received a $21 million investment from Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm Founders Fund. Peter Thiel was the former CEO of PayPal and is the co-founder of Founders Fund, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm that invests in companies building revolutionary technologies. It has also received major support from other big names such as Patrick and John Collison, Elad Gil, Sarah Guo, Chris Re, Eric Glyman, and many more.
While Devin is still in development, we have some early insights into Devin’s capabilities from the developers.
Conclusion
Cognition Labs consists of a team of excellent individuals who have vast experience in various domains. They are led by Scott Wu, whose brilliance has amazed people since his childhood days. This young startup has a very bright future ahead having received the backing of the biggest names in the industry. Stay tuned to see what they can achieve
