Scott Wu

Scott Wu has pushed software agents from a provocative demonstration into a fast-growing enterprise product. The 2025–2026 expansion combined a redesigned agent environment, the acquisition of an AI-native editor and reported adoption at substantial scale—while keeping scrutiny on reliability and production performance.

Scott Wu grew up in the United States in a Chinese-American family and became known early for exceptional competitive-programming results. He later co-founded Cognition with Steven Hao and Walden Yan, serving as chief executive. In 2024 the company introduced Devin, presented as an autonomous software engineer capable of planning, coding, debugging and using development tools. Initial demonstrations created enormous attention, but independent testers subsequently questioned whether the public presentation overstated reliability on unconstrained work. That scrutiny remains relevant. The more persuasive evidence has emerged through subsequent product iteration and enterprise use rather than the launch narrative alone. In April 2025, the company released Devin 2.0, introducing an agent-native development environment, parallel agent sessions, planning and repository search. In July it acquired Windsurf, bringing an established coding environment and its team into Cognition. By September, the company reported that Devin’s annual recurring revenue had risen from US$1 million to US$73 million in nine months. In May 2026, it announced financing at a US$26 billion valuation and reported a US$492 million revenue run rate, more than tenfold growth in enterprise use since January and 89% of its internal code committed by Devin. These are company statements. Wu’s contribution is the sustained attempt to turn software agency into a production system after the original demonstration’s claims were contested.