Cognition CEO Scott Wu on acquiring Windsurf, AI replacing engineers, and the Moneyball-ification of everything

27/08/2025 57 min Episodio 8
Cognition CEO Scott Wu on acquiring Windsurf, AI replacing engineers, and the Moneyball-ification of everything

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Episode Synopsis


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-acquiringTimestamps(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

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