Steven Hao
Steven Hao is cofounder and chief technology officer of Cognition, the company behind Devin, an AI software engineer. He won silver for the United States at the International Olympiad in Informatics in 2013 and gold in 2014, then completed a computer science and mathematics degree at MIT in 2018. Work at Scale AI followed, including sensor fusion for autonomous vehicles. With Scott Wu and Walden Yan, he helped found Cognition in 2023, and in March 2024 the company released a demo of Devin. In September 2026 Cognition raised $2 billion at a $48 billion valuation.
- Now at
- Cognition
Timeline
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2013–2014
Medals at the informatics olympiad
He competes for the United States at the International Olympiad in Informatics, taking silver in 2013 and gold in 2014, and finishes sixth of 311 contestants in 2014.
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2016–2018
MIT and a programming contest
In 2016 he is on the MIT team that places sixth at the International Collegiate Programming Contest. He studies mathematics and computer science at MIT, interns at Dropbox and D.E. Shaw, and completes the bachelor's degree in 2018.
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2018
Engineering at Scale AI
From 2018 he works as a software engineer at Scale AI, on sensor fusion for autonomous vehicles and machine learning.
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2023
Co-founding Cognition
With Scott Wu and Walden Yan, he helps found Cognition in 2023. The three are competitive programmers with gold medals from the International Olympiad in Informatics.
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March 2024
A demo of Devin
In March 2024, Cognition releases a demo of Devin. The system takes a programming assignment, plans how to solve it, writes and tests the code, corrects mistakes, and produces a finished result.
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September 2026
Raising two billion dollars
In September 2026, Cognition raises $2 billion from private investors at a $48 billion valuation.
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As of October 2026
Cognition's chief technology officer
He is cofounder and chief technology officer of Cognition. Devin, its coding agent, is used by businesses including Citibank and fintech Ramp.
Sources and credits
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