Cognition’s AI ’Devin’ Targets $10B Valuation—Why Wall Street’s Already Salivating
Move over, human coders—Devin’s gunning for your job. Cognition’s AI developer just sparked a Silicon Valley bidding war, with whispers of a $10 billion valuation. Not bad for software that (so far) mostly autocompletes your existential dread.
Behind the hype machine
VCs are tripping over themselves to throw money at anything with 'AI' in the pitch deck. Devin’s no exception—even if its current capabilities read more like 'glorified Stack Overflow scraper' than Skynet.
The $10B question
Let’s be real: that valuation’s 90% FOMO, 10% actual tech. But when has that ever stopped a hype cycle? Just ask the crypto bros who bought BNB at ATH.
Devin’s real edge? Timing. The market’s starving for an AI narrative that doesn’t involve chatbots writing bad poetry. Now watch as every hedge fund manager suddenly becomes an 'AI expert' by lunchtime.
You get billions, you get billions, everyone gets billions!
The funding frenzy is just part of broader investor exuberance around AI. U.S.-based AI startups raised $104.3 billion in the first half of 2025 alone—a lot of money considering that AI startups raised $104.4 billion in 2024 during peak AI hype.
Recent reports indicate that AI funding reached $73.1 billion in Q1 globally, tripling the amount from the same quarter in the previous year and accounting for 57.9% of all venture deals.
However, the road is not easy for Cognition.
Early reviews of Devin described it as bad at its job in real-world scenarios, often requiring human intervention or failing benchmarks entirely.
The Register reported that independent tests showed Devin struggling with tasks that human developers would find routine.
Even today, with AI agents being significantly more powerful, it is not possible to say that an AI agent is capable of matching human behavior or being fully accurate in even basic tasks all the time. Hallucinations remain a significant burden for these bots.
But the promise of agentic AI—systems that can autonomously complete complex multi-step tasks—has captivated Silicon Valley. Microsoft and Alphabet report that AI already generates approximately 30% of the code on some projects, indicating that even with some work required, there is potential in the technology.
Cognition's latest moves suggest aggressive expansion plans. Earlier this month, the company acquired rival Windsurf after OpenAI passed on the deal.
"The new Cognition will work faster than ever," CEO Scott Wu said in a video announcing the acquisition, emphasizing the company’s focus on agentic solutions.
The $10 billion valuation would put Cognition in a rare company among AI startups, approaching the stratospheric levels of OpenAI ($300 billion after its latest round) and Anthropic ($60 billion).
Yet, unlike those companies building foundational models, Cognition is betting everything on a single application: replacing entry-level software engineers.
For now, Cognition continues to hire competitive programmers—its Wikipedia page notes that team members include Gennady Korotkevich and Andrew He, both renowned for their coding competitions.
Whether their skills can translate into a product worth $10 billion remains the billion-dollar question.
