Following Cognition's $1 billion funding round, the focus has once again shifted to whether AI programming agents will replace engineers. As the developer of Devin, the company outlined a vision of "autonomous software development" in its funding announcement, but CEO Scott Wu's wording on this was more cautious.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Wu said that Cognition never intended Devin to be a tool to replace human programmers from the beginning. In his view, this type of agent is more like a collaborating partner for developers, with the goal of helping teams complete software builds faster, rather than removing engineers from the development process.

Devin is positioned as a development assistant.

Wu stated that what many software engineers truly enjoy is the process of turning ideas into products. The role of AI agents is to take over some of the repetitive, time-consuming, and mechanical tasks, allowing engineers to focus their time on design, creation, and product implementation itself.

He likened this change to another abstract upgrade in the history of software development. In the past, development environments had already liberated programmers from lower-level machine instructions; now, agents have further shortened the distance between "proposing an idea" and "producing software."

Devin is already widely used within the company.

Although Wu disagrees with the term "replacing programmers," Cognition also disclosed that Devin has already taken on the majority of software delivery work within the company. The company stated that 89% of the code submitted by engineers was completed by Devin, with the remainder mainly coming from local proxy tools, including Windsurf-related products acquired by the company last year.

Wu explained that Devin is currently better suited to handling many tail-end tasks that engineers are unwilling to commit to long-term, such as upgrading legacy software, migrating applications, and some maintenance tasks. These types of tasks are usually lengthy and repetitive, but they must be completed.

• The company completed a $1 billion financing round this week.
• The latest valuation has reached $26 billion.
• Devin accounts for 89% of internal code commits.

The ability is still in the junior/intermediate engineer range.

Regarding Devin's current skill level, Wu stated that he can complete some tasks independently, but his overall skill level is still roughly between junior and intermediate engineers, depending on the type of task.

This means that AI programming agents are already capable of handling a significant portion of development work, but they are still far from completely taking over complex software engineering processes. Wu also acknowledged that as the agents continue to learn and improve, software development will enter a phase of faster change.

The goal is to expand into more industries.

Wu believes that software and code are just the first areas where AI agents are being implemented, and similar tools will enter industries such as customer service and healthcare in the future. However, he emphasizes that the final decision should still be in human hands, and AI is more suitable as an augmentation tool than a direct replacement for professional positions.

Judging from this statement, Cognition is promoting more automated software development on the one hand, and trying to downplay the narrative that "AI is taking away programmers' jobs" on the other hand, positioning Devin as a collaborative system to improve productivity rather than a tool for layoffs.