SpaceX attempted to acquire AI coding startup Cognition, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter, as the company works to close the AI gap with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Cognition CEO Scott Wu disputed the report, stating on X that the company was not for sale and that no talks had occurred between the two firms.
The report followed SpaceX’s recently closed $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, another AI coding startup, and comes after SpaceX absorbed Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this year before going public in a June IPO that pushed its valuation toward $2.3 trillion at its peak. Musk reportedly told SpaceX employees that AI could represent 99 percent of the company’s value within four to five years, underscoring pressure to expand AI revenue.
AI-assisted coding has become a proven monetization path, exemplified by Anthropic’s growth through Claude Code. Cursor and SpaceX have already released a joint model, Grok 4.6, aimed at coding and agentic tasks. Bloomberg reported that acquisition talks with Cognition are no longer active, though the companies may explore Cognition using SpaceX’s computing capacity instead. Cognition, whose customers include Mercedes-Benz and Goldman Sachs, raised $1 billion in May at a $25 billion valuation and is reportedly in early talks for new funding at $40 billion.
