transmission 10 · the chronology
Every dated event in the archive, laid end to end. Late 2023 to October 2026: from three medalists and a demo video to a $40-billion conversation.
| when | event |
|---|---|
| late 2023 | Scott Wu, Steven Hao, and Walden Yan — all IOI gold medalists — found Cognition in San Francisco |
| when | event |
|---|---|
| early 2024 | Founders Fund wires $21M at a $350M valuation |
| mar 12 | Devin unveiled — ‘the first AI software engineer’; 13.86% SWE-bench claim; interviews passed, Upwork jobs done |
| apr | Founders Fund leads $175M at $2B — unicorn in the first public quarter |
| mar–dec | early-access program runs; Devin mutates behind the curtain |
| dec 10 | Devin GA — $500/mo, unlimited seats, Slack + IDE extension + API |
| when | event |
|---|---|
| mar | 8VC-led round marks ~$4B valuation |
| spring | Devin pricing drops to a $20 Core tier — ACUs replace seats |
| apr 25 | DeepWiki opens — free AI wiki for every public GitHub repo |
| may 15 | SWE-1 family ships in Windsurf Wave 9 — SWE-1, -lite, -mini |
| may 22 | DeepWiki MCP server ships |
| mid-year | Kevin-32B — multi-turn RL CUDA kernel model, open weights |
| jun | Devin ARR reaches $73M (from $1M the previous September) |
| jul 11 | Google’s $2.4B reverse-acquihire guts Windsurf’s leadership |
| jul 14 | Cognition acquires Windsurf — signed over a single weekend |
| sep | $400M+ raise at $10.2B post-money; lifetime net burn still under $20M |
| oct 16 | SWE-grep — the context-retrieval specialist |
| oct 29 | SWE-1.5 — 950 tok/s via Cerebras; the ‘Falcon Alpha’ mystery resolved |
| when | event |
|---|---|
| early 2026 | SWE-1.6 Preview published mid-run — +11% SWE-Bench Pro over 1.5 |
| apr | SWE-1.6 GA — ‘model UX’, free for three months |
| may | reported valuation reaches ~$26B |
| jun | Windsurf renamed Devin Desktop — one brand, two tempos |
| jul 8 | SWE-1.7 — RL inside the Devin harness, Cerebras at 1000 TPS |
| aug | Bloomberg: fundraising talks at ≥$40B |
| sep 10 | SWE-2 — Kimi K3 base, multi-trillion RL, effort levels, FrontierCode 50.0% |
| oct | the annals you are reading are compiled by a dog and committed to the archive |
2023 ▇ founders
mar'24 ▇▇ devin demo
dec'24 ▇▇▇ GA — $500/mo
apr'25 ▇▇▇▇ deepwiki · core tier
may'25 ▇▇▇▇▇ swe-1 family
jul'25 ▇▇▇▇▇▇ windsurf acquired
sep'25 ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ $10.2B raise
oct'25 ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ swe-1.5 + swe-grep
apr'26 ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ swe-1.6
jul'26 ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ swe-1.7
sep'26 ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ SWE-2
Dates as publicly reported; mid-year items placed where the record is fuzzy. When two sources disagreed, the louder one lost.
— END OF TRANSMISSION · CTR-(ok)VERIFIED% —
+++ COGNITION ANNALS +++ DEVIN · THE AI SOFTWARE ENGINEER +++ SWE-1 → SWE-1.5 → SWE-1.6 → SWE-1.7 → SWE-2 +++ WINDSURF FOREVER +++ COMPILED BY DOGBED, NOT WRITTEN BY HAND +++ NO JAVASCRIPT WAS HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS ARCHIVE +++
rendered by dogbed — a document compiler, not a CMS. one binary, one template, thirteen documents.