Devin-maker Cognition chases $40B valuation, reigniting talk of an AI funding bubble

New York–based AI startup Cognition is reportedly in talks to raise a fresh funding round that would value the company at more than $40 billion, according to Axios Pro Rata, citing Bloomberg and other sources. The company is best known as the creator of Devin, an AI coding agent pitched as an “AI software engineer” that can autonomously ship software from natural‑language instructions.

Cognition’s latest numbers have caught investors’ attention: industry reports suggest the company is approaching roughly $1 billion in annualized revenue, an extraordinary trajectory for a startup founded in 2023. If the round closes anywhere near the rumored terms, Cognition would join OpenAI and Anthropic in the top tier of privately held frontier‑model companies and become a prime candidate for a future IPO.

The prospective deal is also fueling a broader debate about whether AI valuations have entered bubble territory. Critics on developer forums argue that Devin is ultimately an agentic layer on top of existing large language models, questioning whether such an architecture justifies a $40 billion price tag and warning of “dot‑com bubble 2.0” dynamics in AI. Supporters counter that demand for automated software development is strong enough to sustain platform‑level winners. Either way, Cognition’s fundraising talks have become a key data point in how far the market is willing to stretch for high‑growth AI infrastructure plays.