This Week’s Top Talent Pools

Cognition, the company behind the autonomous software engineer Devin, announced $2B at a $48B valuation today, a Series E led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel with Founders Fund, General Catalyst and Avenir. That is nearly double the $26B it set four months ago and takes total funding past $4.5B. Run-rate revenue has gone from $492M in May to almost $900M now, against roughly $1M two years ago.

  1. Moritz Stephan in Stanford (CEO @ Hone)

    1. Role: Software Engineer @ Cognition (2 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Co-Founder & Advisor @ Fizz (YC S21, $41M from Kleiner Perkins, NEA), Undergraduate Research Assistant @ Stanford AI Laboratory

    3. Description: "Hone builds AI that owns outcomes, not tasks.”

    4. Contact: [email protected]

  2. Martin McKeaveney in Lisbon (Founder @ Soria Labs)

    1. Role: Engineering @ Cognition (1.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: CTO & Co-Founder @ Budibase (acquired), CTO & Co-Founder @ Autonurture AI, Director @ Shogun Digital

    3. Description: "Helping Enterprises adopt AI"

  3. Daniel Chiu in San Francisco (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Product & Engineering @ Cognition (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Product & Engineering @ Watershed, Product & Engineering @ Kalshi, Trading Intern @ Jane Street, Software Engineer @ Figma, Harvard CS

    3. Description: Left the operating role 12/25, now listed as an advisor to Cognition

  4. Steven Cao in San Francisco (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Researcher @ Cognition (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Research Intern @ Redwood Research

    3. Description: Left 6/26, Harvard class of ‘28

Clay, the GTM data and outbound automation platform, is raising new money led by Wellington at a $7B pre-money valuation, per Axios on 31 August 2026. That is more than four times its value in early 2025 and comes on top of a $100M Series C led by CapitalG in August 2025 at $3.1B post-money, with Sequoia, Meritech, First Round, BoxGroup, Boldstart and Sapphire Ventures participating, taking disclosed funding to $204M. A $55M employee tender led by DST Global in January 2026 had already marked the company at $5B. Clay crossed $100M ARR in December 2025, serves more than 14,000 customers including OpenAI and Canva, and holds enterprise net revenue retention above 200%.

  1. Théo Powers in Vancouver (Founder & CEO @ Fiber)

    1. Role: Full Stack Engineer, FTE #1 @ Clay (5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Founder & CEO @ merkle (acquired), Senior SWE @ Coinbase

    3. Description: "The Stablecoin Neobank”

  2. Adam Eldefrawy in NYC (Co-Founder & CTO @ Goodlabs)

    1. Role: SWE, FTE #5 @ Clay (3.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: SWE @ Meta, Intern @ Root Ventures, Research Assistant @ UC Irvine

    3. Description: “Goodlabs pairs blood donation with preventive lab testing to grow donors and retention while giving people meaningful health insights.”

  3. Lele Xu in SF (Stealth)

    1. Role: Early Growth @ Clay (2 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Co-Founder & CTO @ Sillable, Early hire @ Snackpass ($100M+ from a16z, Y Combinator, Craft), Technical PM @ Google, Full Stack SWE @ HelloFresh

    3. Description: Stealth since 3/26

  4. Brian Liang in Brooklyn (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Software Engineer @ Clay (4 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: SWE @ Rockset, SWE @ Facebook, SWE @ LinkedIn, SWE @ Expedia Group, Northwestern

    3. Description: Left Clay 5/26 after building waterfalls, workbooks and functions.

Wonderful, the Israeli-Dutch company building enterprise AI agents for non-English-speaking markets, raised $550M on 2 September at a $5B valuation, led by Insight Partners, with Salesforce investing for the first time and Index Ventures, IVP, Vine Ventures, 9Yards and Bessemer returning. That doubles the $2B mark set six months earlier and takes total funding past $800M for a company founded in early 2025. Run-rate revenue is roughly $70M, heading past $100M by year end, across 35 markets and about 650 staff.

  1. Piotr Antropov in Riga (Stealth)

    1. Role: GM Baltics @ Wonderful (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Co-CEO & Co-Founder @ Lokalise ($50M Series B, Prosus, Dawn Capital), Chief Strategy Officer @ Lokalise, Business Development @ Apply Intelligent Technologies

    3. Description: Left Wonderful on 5/26

Unacademy, once one of India's most valuable edtech startups, was acquired by rival upGrad for ~$206M in an all-stock deal — roughly 94% below its $3.44B peak valuation from 2021. The SoftBank, Tiger Global, and General Atlantic–backed company raised ~$880M across 13 rounds. Co-founder Gaurav Munjal stays on as CEO ("We raised at a peak, but sold at a fraction of that. I'm not going to dress these facts up."), and early technical and product leadership is departing to build.

  1. Hemesh Singh in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Co-Founder & CTO @ Unacademy (9.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Member @ South Park Commons, CTO @ Flatchat

    3. Description: Left South Park Commons on 2/26

    4. Contact: Twitter

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