Cognition Raises $1 Billion at $26 Billion Valuation

AI lab Cognition has raised more than $1 billion in a fresh funding round, Benzinga reported Wednesday. The deal values the San Francisco-based company at $26 billion. Lux Capital, General Catalyst, and 8VC led the raise.

A Crowded Cap Table of Marquee Names

Existing backers returning for the round included Founders Fund, Bain Capital Ventures, Elad Gil, Alpha Wave, Avenir, and Vitruvian. First-time investors Ribbit Capital, Atreides, and Layer Global also joined. The breadth of participation signals strong conviction across both growth and venture-stage investors.

Also Read: OpenAI’s Valuation Surge Highlights the High Stakes of the AI Arms Race

Devin Drives Revenue to Nearly $500 Million Run Rate

The Cognition funding round is anchored by momentum behind Devin, the company’s flagship AI software engineer product first launched two years ago. Enterprise adoption has grown more than tenfold since January. The company now reports an annualized revenue run rate of $492 million.

Customers deploying Devin include Citi, Goldman Sachs, Mercedes-Benz, Dell, Santander, and both the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy. Cognition describes its mission as building toward what it calls self-driving software development. Under that model, engineers focus on defining problems while AI agents handle execution. The company says 89% of code its own engineers commit is now written by Devin itself.

Also Read: General Catalyst Backs a New Wave of Enterprise AI Infrastructure Plays

From $10 Billion to $26 Billion in Under a Year

Cognition’s trajectory has been steep even by AI startup standards. The company closed a $400 million round in September 2025 that put its valuation at $10.2 billion, according to prior CNBC reporting. That figure has now more than doubled in roughly eight months.

Founders Scott Wu, Steven Hao, and Walden Yan launched the company in 2023. It has since grown at roughly 50% month-over-month for the past half year. Cognition also acquired Windsurf last July after that company’s CEO departed and its research team moved to Google. OpenAI had previously explored a merger with Windsurf, but those talks did not produce a deal.

Cognition positions itself as an “agent lab” rather than a pure software vendor. It works across multiple foundation model providers, letting enterprise clients select models by cost and performance. The company tracks Devin’s output across more than 100 software-engineering task categories.

Read Next: AI Infrastructure Spending Surges as Enterprise Adoption Accelerates