SpaceX approached Cognition for acquisition four days after closing Cursor deal

CEO's denial came three hours after the report

Bloomberg reported on the 19th (local time), citing sources, that SpaceX had approached AI coding startup Cognition AI about an acquisition. Cognition CEO Scott Wu pushed back directly shortly after the report, posting on X that the company is "not for sale" and stating flatly that the two companies had never even sat down for talks. Neither SpaceX nor Cognition responded to TechCrunch's request for comment.

Four days after closing Cursor, the next target

The report comes just four days after SpaceX finalized its acquisition of Cursor. SpaceX secured an option in April to acquire Cursor for up to $60 billion, and after resuming the acquisition process following its June IPO, it made Cursor an official subsidiary on the 15th, according to Cursor's own blog. Cognition, maker of the AI coding agent Devin, appears to be next in line. On the 12th, it was reported that Cognition was already in talks to raise new funding at a $40 billion valuation. Its valuation when it raised $1 billion last May was reported as $26 billion, though TechCrunch cited a figure of $25 billion, so the two outlets' numbers diverge. At the time, its annualized revenue was $492 million, with customers including Mercedes-Benz and Goldman Sachs.

Talks may have stalled, but the computing angle lives on

Bloomberg reported that acquisition talks between SpaceX and Cognition are no longer active, but added that the two companies are still discussing ways to collaborate. One option under discussion is for Cognition to use SpaceX's computing resources. SpaceX is known to lease out computing capacity beyond what it needs for its own AI operations to other AI companies such as Anthropic, and the idea is that this spare capacity could also be opened up to Cognition. Scott Wu's denial made no mention of this specific computing collaboration possibility.

SpaceX's AI bet

SpaceX acquired Elon Musk's AI company xAI earlier this year, and following a major IPO in June, its market cap briefly climbed to roughly $2.3 trillion. Last week, Musk reportedly told SpaceX employees that "AI will account for 99% of the company's value within four to five years" — a goal that would require far greater AI revenue than the company currently generates. This month, Cursor and SpaceX jointly released Grok 4.6, a new model that scored higher on coding and multi-step agentic task benchmarks. However, xAI's chatbot Grok has struggled to win over enterprise customers due to past controversies, including the "MechaHitler" incident and a non-consensual sexual imagery scandal.

Editor's view

Framing this as a single acquisition attempt misses the bigger picture. SpaceX isn't simply buying up coding agent companies — it's building a channel to sell computing resources into coding, the market where AI monetization has been proven fastest. Anthropic's revenue surge from Claude Code is already a case in point, and the Cursor acquisition followed that same playbook. Even if the Cognition deal falls through, a computing lease arrangement would let SpaceX achieve the same effect without an acquisition.

For Cognition, this denial isn't just about pride. It's one of the few independent coding startups not yet absorbed by a major model developer, and its valuation has been climbing fast enough to go from $26 billion in May to talk of $40 billion just three months later. Acquisition rumors circulating at a moment like this can actually work in its favor at the negotiating table. That's what makes it notable that Scott Wu denied a sale outright while staying silent on the possibility of a computing partnership.

There's a separate takeaway for domestic companies here. Teams adopting AI coding tools now need to consider who is supplying the computing power behind those tools. Companies that control computing infrastructure, like SpaceX, becoming the de facto backers of coding startups is likely to become more common. Whether through acquisition or leasing, this coding-agent landscape is likely to shift again within weeks.