Scott Wu


Scott Wu is an American entrepreneur who is co-founder of Cognition AI and Lunchclub. He is also a competitive programmer who won three gold medals at the International Olympiad in Informatics and came third place in the 2021 Google Code Jam.

Early life and education

Wu was born in 1997 in Louisiana to a Chinese immigrant family. He attended Baton Rouge Magnet High School. Growing up, he competed in competitions related to programming and mathematics, and won three gold medals at the International Olympiad in Informatics. He also competed in Mathcounts and became individual champion in 2011.
After high school, Wu attended Harvard University, where he graduated in 2019 with a B.A. in economics. As an undergraduate at Harvard College, he was part of the team representing it in the 2016 International Collegiate Programming Contest which won a gold medal and came third place overall.

Career

From to 2014 to 2015, Wu worked as software engineer at Addepar.
In 2017, Wu co-founded Lunchclub and was its CTO until 2022 when he left to pursue different interests. Wu was listed in 2020 edition of Forbes 30 Under 30 for co-founding Lunchclub.
In 2021, Wu came third place in the 2021 Google Code Jam.
In 2023, Wu co-founded Cognition AI which developed Devin AI. It raised $21 million in funding from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund.

Achievements

Competitive programming

A more comprehensive list of achievements can be found at the Competitive Programming Hall Of Fame website.
  • International Olympiad in Informatics: 3 Gold
  • International Collegiate Programming Contest : 1 Gold
  • Google Code Jam: Third place
  • Topcoder Open Algorithm: Third place
  • Codeforces: Legendary Grandmaster

    Mathematics

  • HMMT: Champion
  • Mathcounts : Individual champion

    Family

Wu has an older brother named Neal. Similar to Wu, Neal also has a competitive programming background and attended Harvard University graduating in 2014. His competitive programming achievements include winning three gold medals at the IOI, winning a team silver medal at the ICPC and coming second place in the 2012 Google Code Jam. Neal previously worked at Facebook and Google. He currently works with Wu at Cognition AI.