Cognition hires Alex Stamos as chief security officer

Cognition, the AI startup behind the autonomous coding agent Devin, has brought on Alex Stamos as its chief security officer. His mandate: tighten the company’s own security posture and develop new security products for the market.

Stamos is one of the more recognizable names in enterprise cybersecurity, having served as chief security officer at Meta and chief information security officer at both Yahoo and SentinelOne.

Why Cognition wants a security heavyweight

Cognition was founded in late 2023 and builds Devin, an AI agent designed to automate software engineering tasks. When an AI agent is writing and deploying code inside a bank’s infrastructure, the security implications are enormous.

Cognition reportedly counts major banks among its significant enterprise clients. For those institutions, a CSO with Stamos’s pedigree is less of a nice-to-have and more of a prerequisite for expanding the relationship.

Beyond the defensive play, Stamos is tasked not just with protecting Cognition but with building new security products.

Cognition’s rapid rise

Founded in late 2023, the company has raised over $4 billion in total funding. Its most recent round, a Series E, exceeded $2 billion and valued the company at $48 billion post-money.

By late September 2026, Cognition reported an annualized revenue run rate exceeding $1 billion.

Stamos’s track record

At Yahoo, Stamos inherited the aftermath of one of the largest data breaches in history. At Meta, he navigated the company’s security challenges during a period of intense public scrutiny over data practices and election interference.

His role at SentinelOne as CISO and trust officer gave him direct experience in the cybersecurity product space, operating at the intersection of artificial intelligence and security—precisely the territory Cognition wants to expand into.