Cognition Raises $500 Million to Support AI Coding Products

Cognition reportedly raised $500 million in a funding round to support its artificial intelligence (AI) software code generation products.

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.

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