Cognition CEO Scott Wu has made waves once more this week as his AI coding agent startup, just two years old, secured $1 billion in funding at a valuation of $26 billion. Cognition is known for Devin, among the pioneering and arguably most effective AI coding agents available. According to the CEO, Devin “naturally manages tasks from start to finish.”

In the recent blog post announcing the funding, Cognition outlined a vision of a future where “we are transitioning to a realm of self-driving software development.”

So, is it possible for Devin to take over the role of a mid-level L4 programmer? Yes and no, Wu stated to TechCrunch. “We’ve never seen it as a replacement for humans. I understand that this is a common narrative, but it has never been our perspective.”

In this chaotic year of 2026, where it seems like every day another tech CEO declares job cuts in the name of replacing employees with AI, Wu emphasizes his desire for coders to retain their jobs. “We are all programmers ourselves,” he remarked. “I started coding at the age of nine.”

Indeed, Wu has been recognized as one of the most skilled child competitive programmers in history, as highlighted in a recent piece by Colossus. In second grade, Wu claimed victory in a nationwide math contest for seventh-graders, which led to a youth filled with math and programming competitions. This also connected him with other prodigies who would later establish AI tech startups, including Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang.

Thus, he explains to TechCrunch, the intention has never been to render human programmers redundant.

“When we initiated the development of Devin, it’s a bit amusing,” he reflected, “but we genuinely regarded it as: this is your companion who assists you in building more.” He even showcased a small stuffed animal holding a computer, his own version of a Devin teddy bear, which he keeps on his desk. He considers it a tangible representation of the Devin AI coder “This is my friend that helps you create more.”

Wu does not wish for AI agents to diminish the joy of programming for people.

“It’s no secret that most software engineers enjoy crafting software, right?” he noted. “If you ask them why, they’ll generally respond, ‘Well, it’s like I get to create things from nothing. I can take my entire concept and transform it into a product. I can convert it into an experience.’”

Similarly to how visual development environments abstracted software creation from machine instructions, he perceives agents as another level of abstraction between imagining a software product and realizing it.

Nevertheless, Cognition claims that Devin’s primary function within the company is to produce nearly all software. The firm asserts that 89% of code committed by its engineers was accomplished by Devin, with the remainder attributed to local agents in Windsurf, the AI coding challenger they acquired last year.

Wu elaborates that his agent primarily handles the long-tail maintenance tasks that many programmers typically dislike: updating outdated software; migrating applications from one platform to another. Agents will liberate programmers “from much of the drudgery, enabling them to engage much more in creative work,” he assures.

Thus, Wu is resistant to the notion of Devin “replacing” human programmers. He acknowledges that while it can function independently, its performance aligns “somewhere between a junior and a mid-level engineer” based on the task requirements.

Regarding the idea of self-driving software, where the agent learns and enhances itself, potentially enabling it to operate at higher levels (“recursive” being the trending term in AI these days), Wu states, “I believe we are in for an exhilarating journey.”

He envisions agents making their way into additional sectors where they’ll acquire tasks, from customer support to healthcare, but hopes that the objective remains to augment human workers in those areas as well.

“Coding and software have been the first to evolve, but we will observe this phenomenon in all these other fields,” he forecasts. “One thing that has been clear to us since the beginning is, it should always be up to the human to decide what to do … you can really see this in software engineering, but I think it applies to all these other professions as well.”

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 is set to take place from October 13–15 at Moscone West in San Francisco — and there are just a few hours left to apply to speak.

We’re calling on founders, investors, operators, and tech specialists to submit their applications for a chance to present at one of the year’s most significant tech gatherings.

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At the beginning of this month, I acquired the Kiwibit Bird Feeder Pro 4K AI Camera, and it has quickly turned into my favorite accessory for the backyard. 

The setup process is quite simple. Several mounting choices enable you to position the feeder on a pole, the edge of a window, or a tree. The two seed compartments are engineered for simple refills and easy cleaning. The solar panel on top guarantees that you won’t have to stress about battery life.

Strength and camera performance are also noteworthy highlights. Additional specifications include compatibility with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, cloud storage, integrated two-way audio complete with a microphone and speaker, and a 130-degree wide-angle lens.

Once I set it up in the yard, I linked the feeder to the corresponding Kiwibit app on my smartphone. In this app, you can receive notifications when a bird appears, view recordings, and monitor all the visits.

A few weeks into the trial period is when the real enjoyment began. My phone chimed with a notification each time a new bird arrived, and I found myself excitedly anticipating updates. Even during very rainy days, I managed to attract a handful of birds, including a beautiful northern cardinal that I now look forward to seeing every morning. At the time of writing this, the device has successfully documented visits from six different species. 

Since then, I’ve been hooked. I find myself eagerly checking the app every morning to see which little bird has visited. I share the videos with nearly everyone I know as if they were my own pets. One funny notification I frequently receive is “a nuisance animal detected” whenever squirrels raid my birdseed supply (which occurs as regularly as you’d think). 

The app employs Kiwibit’s exclusive bird-identification algorithm to recognize over 10,000 bird species, including blue jays, ravens, and mourning doves. The Activity tab is especially beneficial, as it logs the number of “visits” recorded, videos saved, and total species seen. You can also browse through the calendar to check specific days. The Birds tab provides extensive information on each species, including detailed descriptions sourced from Wikipedia.

However, I did observe that the system — which usually is priced between $179.99 to $249.99, based on the model — sometimes struggles with accurately counting “visits.” For instance, if a house sparrow feeds in front of the camera for several minutes, the AI might mistakenly log it as numerous visits, even if the bird hasn’t moved considerably. 

In conclusion, using the Kiwibit Bird Feeder Pro has been a joy. If you’re searching for a method to engage with nature while having fun collecting bird species like Pokémon, give this intelligent feeder a try. Just be ready for all the squirrels to show up as well. 

AI’s biggest champions have argued for some time that the technology will usher in an era of unprecedented productivity gains, richly rewarding workers who harness it while displacing those who don’t.

Zeb Evans, CEO of the collaboration software startup ClickUp, claims that this shift is imminent. Last Thursday, Evans announced on X that the company, which was last valued in 2021 at $4 billion, had laid off 22% of its workforce yet characterized that reduction as not a cost-cutting measure, but rather a radical embrace of AI that will propel the company to the next level.

“Most savings from this change will flow directly back into the people who stay. We’ll be introducing million-dollar salary bands. If you create outsized impact using AI, you’ll be paid outside of traditional bands,” Evans wrote.

ClickUp recently introduced roughly 3,000 internal AI agents to handle a wide range of complex tasks on behalf of its employees, according to a Fortune article published several days ago. Instead of performing the work themselves, staff members are now expected to direct these agents and ultimately review the output to ensure it meets the company’s standards.

Evans’s goal, according to his X post, is for AI to turbocharge ClickUp into a “100x org.”  

ClickUp is not alone in its hope that AI agents will provide massive productivity gains.

In fact, according to a recent Gartner survey, about 80% of companies using autonomous tech have cut jobs. However, the study found that workforce reductions aren’t necessarily translating into meaningful financial returns.

While Gartner’s findings suggest some companies use unproven AI as an excuse to downsize, ClickUp maintains it is not one of them.

Evans told TechCrunch via email that the startup is indeed seeing productivity gains from AI agents. Not only is ClickUp measuring those efficiencies internally, but it’s also apparently gearing up to include them in a forthcoming product for its customers.   

“Instead of gamifying token cost, we gamify value created and time saved,” Evans wrote.

In recent months, a growing number of companies have started monitoring employee token consumption, using it as a metric to see who is actually adopting AI tools. But critics argue that “tokenmaxxing”—as this concept is known—is the wrong metric because it simply racks up AI expenses.

“The people that automate their jobs with AI will always have a job,” Evans claimed in his post. But if AI keeps taking over more tasks, ClickUp will eventually need fewer and fewer people, eliminating those who fail to automate their functions well.

Tech circles have long theorized about this scenario.

One extreme example of a high-profile startup using AI automation to the max already exists. Polsia, a one-year-old startup that claims to handle all software operations for solopreneurs, is run by just one person: its founder and CEO, Ben Broca. That efficiency is apparently paying off: Polsia just raised $30 million at a $250 million valuation.