Original article excerpt
Server-side extracted preview paragraphs from the original source.
Cognition makes Devin, the first and arguably most successful AI coding agent. But famed coder Wu says it isn't designed to supplant human programmers.
Cognition CEO Scott Wu made headlines again this week when his two-year-old AI coding agent startup raised $1 billion at a $26 billion valuation. Cognition is the maker of Devin, one of the first and, arguably, most successful AI coding agents. Devin, the CEO says, “naturally owns tasks end to end.”
In fact, in the blog post announcing that raise, Cognition laid out a vision where “we are shifting to a world of self-driving software development.”
So, could Devin replace, say, a mid-level L4 programmer? Yes, and no, Wu told TechCrunch. “We’ve never thought about it as replacing humans. I know it’s like a scenario, folks have said these things. It has never been our view.”
In this wild year of 2026 when every day another tech CEO announces layoffs in the name of supplanting workers with AI, Wu says he especially doesn’t want coders to lose their jobs. “We are all programmers ourselves,” he explained. “I started coding when I was nine.”
In fact, Wu has been called one of the most accomplished child competitive programmers of all time, according to a recent profile in Colossus. As a second-grader, Wu won a nationwide math competition for seventh-graders, which launched a childhood filled with math and programming tournaments. It also introduced him to other wunderkinds who went on to launch other AI tech startups, like Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang.
“When we started building Devin, it’s kind of a funny thing,” he mused, “but we really just thought of it as: this is your buddy who helps you build more.” In fact, he showed off a little stuffed animal holding a computer, his own Devin teddy bear of sorts, that he keeps on his desk. He thinks of it as a physical symbol of the Devin AI coder “This is my buddy that helps you build more.”