Did SpaceX Try to Buy an AI Coding Startup? Its CEO Says No
August 21, 2026
Based on reporting by TechCrunch → — simplified & explained by VAIIYA.
The report and the denial
A Bloomberg report claimed that SpaceX had tried to buy Cognition, a startup known for its AI coding assistant called Devin, as part of a bigger effort by SpaceX to compete with major AI players like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Cognition's CEO quickly pushed back publicly, stating plainly that the company is "not for sale" and that no talks between the two companies had actually taken place.
Why this rumor made sense to people at all
It's not a totally random guess — SpaceX has been aggressively expanding into AI lately. It already owns the AI company xAI (maker of the Grok chatbot) and recently completed a massive $60 billion acquisition of a different AI coding startup, Cursor, just last week. SpaceX has also floated bold ideas like building data centers in space, and it's now a publicly traded company worth close to $2.3 trillion at its peak. Given all that, snapping up another AI coding company wouldn't have been a huge surprise.
Where things actually stand
According to the same report, while a full acquisition isn't currently being discussed, the two companies might still explore some kind of partnership — for instance, Cognition using SpaceX's computing power for its own AI systems. Cognition itself is one of the largest AI coding startups that hasn't yet been bought by a bigger player; it raised $1 billion earlier this year at a $25 billion valuation and is reportedly already in talks for new funding at an even higher $40 billion valuation, with major clients like Mercedes-Benz, Citi, and Goldman Sachs already using its Devin coding agent.