Who are Cognition's decision-makers?

CEO Scott Wu is a Harvard grad, three-time IOI gold medalist, and former co-founder/CTO of Lunchclub; he sets strategy and is the public face of Devin. CTO Steven Hao is an MIT CS/math grad and former top engineer at Scale AI who owns the core technical architecture.

CPO Walden Yan, a Harvard dropout who briefly worked on Cursor at Anysphere, leads product. The trio recruited a roster of elite competitive programmers (including IOI medalists) and added senior go-to-market leadership such as President Russell Kaplan, who joined from Scale AI.

Because Cognition is founder-led and still relatively small, strategy and high-leverage tooling decisions sit with the founders — Wu on company-wide bets, Hao on infrastructure and engineering tools, Yan on product surfaces.

Day-to-day budget ownership is increasingly delegated to functional leaders in go-to-market, finance, and infrastructure as those teams stand up, with President Russell Kaplan owning enterprise go-to-market.

For sellers, the practical buying committee is a lean, highly technical group: expect an engineering or infra owner to evaluate, a founder or the president to sponsor, and finance to formalize as procurement matures.

Cognition runs lean by design — with 89% of its own code committed by Devin, it sustains a high revenue-per-employee ratio and keeps headcount small relative to ARR. The org is weighted toward research and engineering, with a fast-growing enterprise go-to-market function added after the Windsurf acquisition.

The Windsurf deal also brought in seasoned product, engineering, and GTM talent, helping Cognition shift from a research-first startup toward an enterprise software company while keeping the founder-led culture intact.

Employee-count estimates vary by source (roughly 200 to 400 as of mid-2026), reflecting both the post-Windsurf integration and rapid 2026 hiring.