SpaceX's AI acquisition push hits a wall: Cognition denies sell-off talks
SpaceX reportedly tried to buy Cognition, the startup behind the Devin coding agent, in what would have been its second major AI coding acquisition in months — but CEO Scott Wu says it's not happening.
Bloomberg reported Wednesday that SpaceX was in talks to acquire Cognition, citing people familiar with the matter. Wu pushed back within hours, writing on X that the story was inaccurate and that Cognition "is not for sale," adding the two companies haven't been in negotiations. Bloomberg subsequently reported that while the deal talks are no longer active, the companies are still in discussions about a potential partnership — possibly with Cognition using SpaceX's computing capacity.
The attempted acquisition comes just days after SpaceX closed its $60 billion purchase of Cursor, another AI coding startup, and follows its earlier absorption of xAI. SpaceX went public in June at a peak valuation near $2.3 trillion, selling investors on an AI-first future — Musk told employees last week that in "four or five years, AI will be 99% of the value" of the company. But making good on that promise requires actually building the AI business, and the xAI operation has lagged behind competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic while struggling with Grok's reputation problems.
Cognition would have given SpaceX another major piece of the AI coding puzzle. The company's Devin agent serves enterprise customers including Mercedes-Benz, Citi, and Goldman Sachs, and it raised a billion-dollar round at a $25 billion valuation in May. Bloomberg reports Cognition is now in early talks for a new round at a $40 billion valuation. We covered Cognition's funding trajectory in a previous brief — Devin maker Cognition eyes $40B valuation in new round.
The denial matters because it signals that the remaining independent AI coding startups aren't just sitting waiting to be acquired. Cognition could have cashed out at a massive premium to a company with virtually unlimited resources. Instead, Wu chose independence — or at least a partnership that keeps Cognition in control of its own destiny. That's a meaningful statement about where founders see leverage in the AI coding market right now. With Anthropic's Claude Code driving explosive revenue growth and Cursor now folded into SpaceX's orbit, the competitive landscape is reshaping fast. Cognition staying independent means the AI coding agent wars are far from settled.
What to watch: whether the rumored SpaceX-Cognition compute partnership materializes, and how Cognition's $40 billion funding round progresses — if it closes, it would be one of the largest private AI deals in history.
Do you think independent AI coding startups can survive the acquisition wave, or is consolidation inevitable? Tell us in the comments.
