Six-Month-Old AI Startup Behind Devin Now Valued at $2B

Cognition Labs, the AI startup behind the viral software development platform Devin, has raised $175 million in venture capital funding, with its valuation soaring to $2 billion just six months after it launched.

Cognition was founded last November but went viral upon unveiling its AI-powered software development platform in March.

Founders Fund, the Peter Thiel-founded venture capital firm, was the sole investor in the round. The firm previously led Cognition’s series A funding round in March.

Cognition joins a list of impressive AI companies Founders Fund has backed, not limited to the now Google-owned DeepMind, ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Elon Musk’s brain interface startup Neuralink and data analytics firm Palantir.

Acknowledging the raise, Cognition thanked Founders Fund and previous investors including Khosla Ventures and serial tech investor Elad Gil in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

The startup has its eyes set on further investment, however, with its post signing off with “Now on to the next commit.”

Credit: Cognition Labs

Is the Sky the Limit for Cognition?

Devin caused a storm when first unveiled. Its announcement tweet alone garnered 30 million views.

In the weeks following its viral launch, Cognition captured the attention of some of the biggest names in AI. “Wow - it's been quite the month,” Scott Wu, the company’s CEO said.

Related:Devin: AI Software Engineer that Codes Entire Projects from Single Prompt

The startup was also given a boon from OpenAI, becoming one of the early developers given access to the new GPT-4 Turbo with Vision model that can understand both text and images.

Cognition’s Devin platform is using the Vision model to power visual coding tasks in its platform.

However, the startup has faced challenges. Its initial demo also drew criticism from some online users who spotted some inconsistencies with what Cognition claimed it could accomplish.

Wu took to X to address the concerns last week, saying Devin was “far from perfect today.”

“Devin will often work but will often make mistakes, write bugs or get stuck,” Wu said. “We're excited to have more users try the product so that we can continue to build with your feedback.”