Cognition AI is in early-stage fundraising talks at a valuation of at least $40 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The figure represents a 54% increase from the startup's May Series D, which closed at $26 billion.
The jump in valuation over three months comes as investors pursue stakes in AI coding assistants amid a broader race to deploy agentic systems in software development. Cognition raised more than $1 billion in May to reach the $26 billion mark. The new round has not closed and remains in early discussions, meaning the final valuation and capital raised could shift.
Cognition's Devin, an AI agent that can write, test and deploy code, has become one of the most closely watched applications in enterprise AI since its launch in March 2024. The startup competes with OpenAI's o1 model, GitHub's Copilot, and emerging agents from Anthropic and Google, all targeting the $200 billion global software development market.
The coding-assistant category has attracted $15 billion in venture capital over the past 18 months, according to PitchBook data. Cognition remains unprofitable and does not disclose revenue figures. Its prior backers include Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, and Lowercase Capital.
A $40 billion valuation would place Cognition among the ten most valuable AI startups globally, behind OpenAI and Anthropic but ahead of most other foundation-model developers. The startup has grown its user base to over 500,000 developers on a free tier, though it does not report paid customer counts.
The May round closed at a time when venture funding for AI startups had slowed sharply from 2024 levels. A $40 billion valuation in a new round, if completed, would mean renewed institutional interest in application-layer AI companies over pure model makers. The fundraising timeline for this round remains unclear, and no lead investor has been named.
