Updated
Updated · Kotaku · Jul 21
Xbox VP Jared Palmer Exits After 3 Months to Lead Engineering at $4 Billion AI Lab Cognition
Updated
Updated · Kotaku · Jul 21

Xbox VP Jared Palmer Exits After 3 Months to Lead Engineering at $4 Billion AI Lab Cognition

2 articles · Updated · Kotaku · Jul 21

Summary

  • Jared Palmer said Tuesday he has joined Cognition to lead engineering, ending a roughly three-month stint as Xbox vice president of engineering.
  • Palmer had been brought into Asha Sharma’s Xbox leadership team in May to work on developer tools, infrastructure and other complex product and engineering issues, reporting directly to her.
  • The move also cuts short a brief Microsoft run: Palmer joined the company’s CoreAI team only last October before shifting into the Xbox role.
  • Cognition, backed by $21 million from Founders Fund in 2024 and valued at more than $4 billion, builds the AI coding tool Devin.

Insights

As top talent flees a struggling Xbox, can legacy tech giants still compete for innovation against AI-native startups?
With AI coder Devin replacing engineers on major projects, are human programmers facing obsolescence or a creative evolution?
Is Cognition's meteoric $26B valuation a landmark for AI's value, or a warning sign of an unsustainable tech bubble?