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Cognition CEO denies report that SpaceX tried to acquire the startup
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Bloomberg reported Wednesday that Elon Musk’s SpaceX attempted to acquire AI coding startup Cognition, citing sources familiar with the matter. Cognition CEO Scott Wu quickly disputed the report on X, writing that the story was inaccurate, that Cognition “is not for sale,” and that the two companies have not been in talks. The report surfaced days after SpaceX closed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, another AI coding startup, last week. SpaceX acquired Musk’s AI company, xAI, earlier this year and went public in a blockbuster IPO in June, with its market capitalization peaking at nearly $2.3 trillion.
SpaceX has pitched investors on ambitious AI plans, including eventually building data centers in space. However, the xAI business remains early-stage and has fallen behind rivals such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. It has also faced controversies involving its chatbot Grok, including last year’s “MechaHitler” incident and this year’s scandals over nonconsensual sexual imagery.
AI-assisted coding has become one of the clearest ways to monetize the technology, and Anthropic’s rapid growth, driven largely by Claude Code, demonstrates that demand. Cursor was already collaborating with SpaceX before its acquisition; this month, the two released Grok 4.6, a model that scores higher on coding and complex agentic benchmarks.
Adding Cognition would have given SpaceX another path into AI coding, along with Devin and an enterprise customer base including Mercedes-Benz, Citi, and Goldman Sachs. Bloomberg reported that the deal talks are no longer active, but the companies are still discussing working together, potentially with Cognition using SpaceX’s computing capacity, which SpaceX sells to other AI firms like Anthropic. Wu did not address that specific claim in his denial.
Cognition remains one of the largest independent AI software coding startups. In late May, it raised a $1 billion round at a $25 billion post-money valuation, and Bloomberg says it is now in early talks for a new round at a $40 billion valuation. The company made headlines last year when it acquired the remaining assets of competitor Windsurf after Google DeepMind acqui-hired Windsurf’s CEO and top researchers in a $2.4 billion deal.
Following that merger, Cognition laid off 30 employees and offered buyouts to the remaining 200 Windsurf staff, with those staying facing demands such as an 80-hour workweek and six days in the office. That wartime ethic would fit a Musk company; Musk has said he works up to 120 hours a week. Neither SpaceX nor Cognition responded to requests for comment.
