Musk's SpaceX attempted to acquire AI coding startup Cognition, rejected by founder
创业邦 · wechat · 2026-08-20
- Core Event: Bloomberg reports SpaceX attempted to acquire Cognition, the maker of AI software engineer Devin. Founder Scott Wu immediately denied, stating the company is not for sale and no negotiations occurred.
- Compute Partnership: While the acquisition was rejected, the two are discussing a partnership for Cognition to use SpaceX's compute resources. Musk's Colossus cluster holds over 220,000 Nvidia GPUs and has previously served Anthropic.
- Founder Background: Scott Wu is a three-time IOI gold medalist and Codeforces Legendary Grandmaster. He founded Cognition in 2023 with two other IOI medalists. Notably, 89% of the company's code is written by Devin itself.
- Soaring Valuation: Cognition's post-money valuation reached $10.2B in Sept 2025 and jumped to $26B in May 2026. They are now seeking a new round with a target valuation of at least $40B. ARR is approaching $1B with clients like Mercedes-Benz, Goldman Sachs, and NASA.
- Industry Insight: Unlike Cursor (acquired), which acts as a "copilot," Devin operates as an "autopilot" for end-to-end software engineering. Independent AI coding companies ultimately remain dependent on compute resources from tech giants.
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