Cognition CEO Scott Wu on acquiring Windsurf, AI replacing engineers, and the Moneyball-ification of everything
Show notes
Scott Wu joins John Collison to talk about Cognition’s AI software engineer, the Moneyball-ification of everything, math competitions with Alexandr Wang in 6th grade, acquiring Windsurf over a weekend, whether coding tools will be replaced by the labs, and why he thinks we already have AGI.
Full transcript on Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/cheekypint/p/cognition-ceo-scott-wu-on-acquiring
Timestamps
(00:00) Intro
(01:13) Early life and maths competitions
(03:47) Addepar job as a high schooler
(05:43) Where are all the young founders?
(08:45) Moneyball-ification of everything
(11:42) Cognition’s AI software engineer, Devin
(15:46) Essential and accidental complexity
(17:59) How Devin works with enterprises
(19:48) IDE productivity
(21:56) Nihilist computer use argument
(25:55) Benchmarking Devin
(27:15) Market structure
(30:32) Agent economy
(37:21) Cognition’s team of founders
(39:31) Jevons paradox and software
(42:00) When will we see AI UIs?
(45:52) “I think we have AGI”
(47:03) Windsurf deal
(52:37) M&A in AI
(54:21) Cognition’s culture
(55:48) Learning as a CEO
(57:12) Scott’s information diet