Cognition AI Secures $500M Funding, Valuation Soars to $9.8B Amid AI Coding Assistant Boom

AI coding assistant startup Cognition reportedly raises nearly $500M on $9.8B valuation - SiliconANGLE

AI coding assistant startup Cognition reportedly raises nearly $500M on $9.8B valuation Artificial intelligence coding assistant startup Cognition AI Inc. has reportedly raised nearly $500 million in funding on a $9.8 billion valuation, a month after it entered an agreement to acquire Windsurf Inc. While the company hasn't as yet confirmed the raise, The Wall Street Journal reports that earlier this week, Cognition filed a document with the State of Delaware noting the issuance of new Series C preferred shares at a price of $55.20 each, compared with $23.10 each for a previous series of shares. Forbes had previously reported in late July that the company was seeking to raise "north of $300 million" on a $10 billion valaution. Founded in 2023, Cognition specializes in building autonomous AI agents for software development and has as its mission to create AI systems that can operate as fully capable software engineers, moving beyond simple code suggestions to handle the entire development lifecycle. Functionality includes planning tasks, writing and testing code, debugging, deploying solutions and iterating on feedback, all with minimal human intervention. Cognition's main product, Devin, differs from traditional coding assistants that simply offer line-by-line suggestions by autonomously managing projects end-to-end within a secure sandbox environment. Devin can understand high-level project requirements, break them down into executable steps, perform research, write and optimize code, run tests and push deployments. Devin's stats are also impressive, with the AI coding assistant achieving a 13.8% completion rate on the industry-standard SWE-Bench benchmark, a benchmark that measures an AI's ability to solve real GitHub issues. Notably, that number is higher than other large language models such as GPT-4 and Claude. Cognition has also developed an ecosystem around Devin, including MultiDevin, a service that allows a manager AI to coordinate multiple worker AI agents simultaneously, enabling parallel task execution and faster delivery for large, complex projects. The platform offers deployment in secure virtual private cloud environments, ensuring sensitive enterprise data remains protected. Additional tools include Devin Search for instant, cited codebase queries and Devin Wiki, which auto-generates documentation and architecture diagrams. The features give engineering teams the ability to produce software quickly with transparency and traceability required for enterprise compliance. With impressive coding abilities, Cognition's offerings have found a willing audience. Notable customers include Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Ramp Business Corp., Nu Holdings Ltd. and Bilt Rewards Inc. Coming into its new round, Cognition has previously raised more than $300 million in venture capital funding; the exact amount is not clear, as the amount the company raised in its previous round in March was not disclosed but only reported as being in the "hundreds of millions" on a $4 billion valuation. Previous investors in Cognition include 8VC Management, Founders Fund Management and Khosla Ventures.

AI coding start-up Cognition raises $500m in new funding round - WSJ

From left: Jeff Wang, Windsurf, Scott Wu, Cognition. Still from Cognition and Windsfurf announcement July 14 If the reports from the Wall Street journal are true, the $500m round led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund would bring Cognition's valuation to nearly $10bn. Cognition just last month bought up the remaining assets and team at fellow coding AI start-up Windsurf, after the latter's founders and other team members had jumped ship to Google in a deal valued at $2.4bn which included licensing of Windsurf's technology. While Cognition did not disclose the value of the acquisition, co-founder and CEO Scott Wu said that the company was purchasing Windsurf's talent, products, intellectual property and its clientele of more than 350 enterprises. Later reports suggested it quickly laid off 30pc of those employees. Founded in 2023, Cognition's flagship product is an AI coding agent, named Devin, designed to speed up software development. In March, Bloomberg reported that the start-up hit a near $4bn valuation. Windsurf is another AI coding assistant, which raised a Series C funding round last year at a valuation of $1.25bn. Both start-ups are backed by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. While Windsurf is also backed by General Catalyst and Kleiner Perkins, and Cognition's investors include Khosla Ventures, Pear VC and 8VC. The acquisition was to see Cognition "investing heavily" in integrating Windsurf's capabilities into its own products, Wu said. According to him, the acquisition is a doubling down on the start-up's aim to build the "future of software". Now the WSJ is reporting that a new round let by Founders Fund sees Cognition raise &500m toward that goal, as the AI coding start-up sector continues to attract hundreds of millions from venture investors in the US, as some demonstrate rapid revenue growth. According to Cognition's Wu in his July blog post on the acquisition, Windsurf was making "$82M of ARR [annualised revenue rate], with enterprise ARR doubling quarter-over-quarter". As the AI code-generation sector heats up, the WSJ article also pointed to the intense workplace culture these start-ups espouse, and Wu has recently said that those who can't keep up with the "extreme performance culture" will be let go. In a recent post on X, Wu said the team "routinely are at the office through the weekend and do some of our best work late into the night". "Many of us literally live where we work," he said. "We know that people who joined Windsurf didn't expect to join Cognition and while we're proud of how we work, we understand it's not for everyone. We gave our team the opportunity to decide," Wu continued in a post that seemed to reply to the recent The Information reporting that said it had let go 30pc of Windsurf team after the acquisition. "Regardless of their decision, we accelerated and cashed out all four years of equity for everyone from Windsurf, even for the 85pc of employees who hadn't hit their one year cliff," Wu continued. "And for those who opt out, we're providing an additional nine months of pay on top of this." It's a philosophy long embraced by the Musks and Thiels of this world who have little time for normal work life balance for their employees or investees. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Cognition Raises $500 Million to Support AI Coding Products | PYMNTS.com

The round doubled the company's valuation to $9.8 billion, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Thursday (Aug. 14), citing an unnamed source and a document filed with the State of Delaware. Cognition did not immediately reply to PYMNTS' request for comment. According to the WSJ report, the company raised $300 million before this round and was valued at $4 billion earlier this year. This report comes about a month after Cognition acquired AI code generation startup Windsurf following Google's recruitment of several top executives and researchers from Windsurf. In a note sent at the time to the Cognition team, Cognition Co-founder and CEO Scott Wu said the acquisition will enable Cognition to "move even faster on our mission of building the future of software engineering" with its AI software engineer, Devin. PYMNTS reported in April 2024 that Peter Thiel's venture capital firm Founders Fund was pumping money into Cognition and that experts said this signaled the growing influence of AI on software development. "Coding is a labor-intensive practice," tech consultant John Bambenek told PYMNTS at the time. "Copilot can make an experienced developer much more productive by having AI write about 70% of a finished product, and then the developer can tweak and fix errors instead of writing from scratch." PYMNTS reported in May 2024 that AI is transforming the art of computer programming by offering developers a new toolkit to brainstorm ideas, write and refine code and fix bugs. The increased efficiency offered by AI tools has far-reaching implications for businesses across industries, as the tools enable developers to create software and applications faster and with fewer resources. When OpenAI launched GPT-5, its most advanced language model to date, the company said the model can write full software applications with expert-level fluency. It was reported in May that Apple and Anthropic partnered to create a platform that will use AI to write, edit and test code for programmers. The tool generates code or alterations in response to requests made by programmers through a chat interface, tests user interfaces, and manages the process of finding and fixing bugs.