Cognition AI Nears $500M Raise at $9.8B Valuation for Devin
Artificial intelligence coding assistant startup Cognition AI Inc. has reportedly secured nearly $500 million in a new funding round, propelling its valuation to an estimated $9.8 billion. This significant financial boost comes approximately a month after the company entered an agreement to acquire Windsurf Inc., signaling an aggressive expansion strategy.
While Cognition has yet to officially confirm the raise, The Wall Street Journal reported on August 14, 2025, that the company filed a document with the State of Delaware earlier in the week. This filing indicated the issuance of new Series C preferred shares priced at $55.20 each, a substantial increase from the $23.10 per share recorded for a previous series. This aligns with earlier reports from Forbes in late July, which suggested Cognition was aiming to raise “north of $300 million” on a $10 billion valuation.
Founded in 2023, Cognition distinguishes itself by developing autonomous AI agents specifically designed for software development. The company’s ambitious mission is to create AI systems capable of functioning as fully fledged software engineers, moving beyond simple code suggestions to manage the entire software development lifecycle. These capabilities encompass a wide range of tasks, including planning, writing and testing code, debugging, deploying solutions, and iterating on feedback, all with minimal human intervention.
Cognition’s flagship product, Devin, represents a significant leap from conventional coding assistants. Unlike tools that primarily offer line-by-line code suggestions, Devin autonomously manages projects from inception to completion within a secure, isolated sandbox environment. It can interpret high-level project requirements, break them down into actionable steps, conduct necessary research, write and optimize code, execute tests, and push deployments.
Devin’s performance metrics underscore its advanced capabilities. The AI coding assistant achieved an impressive 13.8% completion rate on the industry-standard SWE-Bench benchmark, a rigorous test that evaluates an AI’s proficiency in solving real-world GitHub issues. Notably, this rate surpasses those of other prominent large language models, including GPT-4 and Claude.
Beyond Devin itself, Cognition has cultivated a comprehensive ecosystem of tools to enhance team productivity and enterprise compliance. This includes MultiDevin, a service that enables a central AI manager to coordinate multiple worker AI agents simultaneously, facilitating parallel task execution and accelerating delivery for large, complex projects. The platform also offers deployment in secure virtual private cloud environments, ensuring the protection of sensitive enterprise data. Additional tools like Devin Search provide instant, cited codebase queries, while Devin Wiki automatically generates documentation and architectural diagrams, enabling engineering teams to produce software rapidly with the transparency and traceability crucial for corporate compliance.
Cognition’s sophisticated offerings have resonated strongly within the industry, attracting a notable clientele that includes Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Ramp Business Corp., Nu Holdings Ltd., and Bilt Rewards Inc. Prior to this latest reported round, Cognition had already raised over $300 million in venture capital. The precise amount from its previous round in March was not publicly disclosed, though it was reported to be in the “hundreds of millions” and valued the company at $4 billion. Previous investors in Cognition include prominent firms such as 8VC Management, Founders Fund Management, and Khosla Ventures. The reported nearly $500 million infusion on a $9.8 billion valuation marks a significant acceleration in the company’s growth trajectory and its ambition to redefine software engineering with autonomous AI.