Cognition’s Scott Wu says AI coding agents shouldn’t replace humans

Cognition CEO Scott Wu made headlines again this week erstwhile his two-year-old AI coding cause startup raised $1 cardinal astatine a $26 cardinal valuation. Cognition is the shaper of Devin, 1 of the archetypal and, arguably, astir palmy AI coding agents. Devin, the CEO says, “naturally owns tasks extremity to end.”

In fact, successful the blog post announcing that raise, Cognition laid retired a imaginativeness wherever “we are shifting to a satellite of self-driving bundle development.”

So, could Devin replace, say, a mid-level L4 programmer? Yes, and no, Wu told TechCrunch. “We’ve ne'er thought astir it arsenic replacing humans. I cognize it’s similar a scenario, folks person said these things. It has ne'er been our view.”

In this chaotic twelvemonth of 2026 erstwhile each time another tech CEO announces layoffs successful the sanction of supplanting workers with AI, Wu says helium particularly doesn’t privation coders to suffer their jobs. “We are each programmers ourselves,” helium explained. “I started coding erstwhile I was nine.”

In fact, Wu has been called 1 of the astir accomplished kid competitory programmers of each time, according to a caller illustration successful Colossus. As a second-grader, Wu won a nationwide mathematics contention for seventh-graders, which launched a puerility filled with mathematics and programming tournaments. It besides introduced him to different wunderkinds who went connected to motorboat different AI tech startups, similar Scale AI laminitis Alexandr Wang.

So, helium tells TechCrunch, the thought was ne'er to marque quality programmers obsolete.

“When we started gathering Devin, it’s benignant of comic thing,” helium mused, “but we truly conscionable thought of it as: this is your buddy who helps you physique more.” In fact, helium showed disconnected a small stuffed carnal holding a computer, his ain Devin teddy carnivore of sorts, that helium keeps connected his desk. He thinks of it arsenic a carnal awesome of the Devin AI coder “This is my buddy that helps you physique more.”

Wu doesn’t privation AI agents to instrumentality the joyousness of programming distant from people.

“It’s not a secret, astir bundle engineers emotion gathering software, right?” helium said. “If you inquire them why, what they’ll fundamentally archer you is, ‘Well, it’s similar I get to physique things from nothing. I tin marque my full thought that I have, and crook it into a product. I tin crook it into an experience.’”

Just similar ocular improvement environments abstracted bundle instauration distant from instrumentality instructions, helium views agents arsenic different furniture of abstraction betwixt envisioning a bundle merchandise and producing it.

Yet, Cognition says that Devin’s relation successful its ain institution is to vessel astir each the software. The institution says that 89% of codification committed by its engineers was committed by Devin, and the remainder by section agents successful Windsurf, the AI coding rival it acquired past year.

Wu explains that his agent’s relation is mostly to bash the kinds of long-tail attraction tasks that galore programmers don’t similar to bash anyway: bringing aged bundle up to date; moving applications disconnected 1 level and onto another. Agents volition escaped programmers “from a batch of the toil, and truthful they tin bash overmuch much of the instauration side,” helium promises.

So Wu bristles astatine the thought of Devin “replacing” quality coders. While helium says it tin enactment independently, it works astatine “somewhere betwixt a inferior and a mid-level engineer” depending connected the task astatine hand.

As for the conception of self-driving software, wherever the cause learns and improves itself truthful that 1 day, it volition enactment astatine higher levels (“recursive” is the latest buzzword successful AI these days), Wu says. “I deliberation we are successful for a chaotic ride.”

He sees agents entering different fields wherever they volition larn tasks, from lawsuit work to medicine, but hopes the extremity volition beryllium to augment quality workers successful those areas, too.

“Code and bundle has been the archetypal to move, but we’ll spot this hap successful each these different industries,” helium predicts. “One happening that’s been wide to america since the opening is, it should ever beryllium up to the quality what to bash … you truly spot this successful bundle engineering, but I deliberation it’s existent successful each these different professions too.”