Ep 115: Scott Wu, Devin, and a Trillion-Dollar Opportunity

Joe Lonsdale: American Optimist

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Ep 115: Scott Wu, Devin, and a Trillion-Dollar Opportunity

Joe Lonsdale

Jun 12, 2025

Transcript

Scott Wu took the technology world by storm when he released a demo of Devin, the first AI software engineer. A year later, Devin has gone global, and his company — Cognition AI — is valued at over $4 billion. What are the next leaps for AI coding agents? Could the total economic impact be in the trillions of dollars? And is Scott worried that Devin may someday replace him?

Scott's journey to the epicenter of the AI race started in an unlikely place: growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the son of Chinese immigrants. At an early age, he excelled in math and was fast tracked into high school courses [not held back in the name of equity!], culminating in a national Mathcounts championship and three gold medals in competitive programming at the International Olympiad in Informatics. After highschool, he joined Addepar as a top young software engineer before attending Harvard.

Scott gathered his smartest friends and many other math, physics and programming champions under one roof to build Cognition, and when they're not architecting new AI breakthroughs, they're quizzing each other with math games. Learn why the top math minds are dominant in AI and what this tells us about the nature of AI progress and where we're headed next. Plus, the first person to solve one of Scott's tough math challenges in this episode gets free swag [leave your answer in the comments or email info@americanoptimist.com]. Finally, we discuss the future of software engineering and what AI coding agents mean for economic productivity as tasks that once took months to complete now take a weekend with Devin. Is it a trillion dollar opportunity?

It's inspiring to see the impact an optimistic, brilliant mind like Scott can have on the world — and he's still a few years shy of his 30th birthday.