Steven Hao is co-founder and chief technology officer of Cognition AI. He founded it in 2023 with Scott Wu and Walden Yan. Hao is an IOI gold medallist, as are his two co-founders.
In March 2024 the team demoed Devin, an AI software engineer, which scored 13% on SWE-bench. The launch drew heavy public criticism. In April 2024 the company raised $175M at a $2B valuation from Founders Fund.
In July 2025 it agreed to buy Windsurf after Google's $2.4B hire of its leaders. Windsurf was renamed Devin Desktop in June 2026.
Cognition raised over $2B at a $48B valuation in a Series E on 8 September 2026, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel.