SpaceX has reportedly been in talks to acquire Cognition, an AI coding startup, as part of its effort to strengthen its position against competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic. However, Scott Wu, CEO of Cognition, quickly refuted the claim via social media, stating that the company is not for sale and that no acquisition discussions have taken place. This news followed closely after SpaceX's recent $60 billion acquisition of another AI coding startup, Cursor, which was finalized last week.

SpaceX, alongside Elon Musk's AI company xAI, which it acquired earlier this year, is aggressively pursuing growth in the AI sector. Despite this, xAI remains in its early stages and has faced challenges, including controversies over its Grok chatbot’s content and difficulties winning over enterprise clients. Musk has emphasized the importance of AI to SpaceX's future, suggesting that AI could represent 99% of the company’s value within five years, but noted this will require significant revenue growth from AI-related ventures.

Cognition stands out as one of the largest independent AI coding startups yet to be acquired, recently raising $1 billion at a $25 billion valuation and reportedly negotiating a new funding round valuing it at $40 billion. The startup has an impressive enterprise customer base, including Mercedes-Benz, Citi, and Goldman Sachs. Earlier this year, Cognition integrated the assets of competitor Windsurf following a $2.4 billion acquisition of talent and licensing by Google DeepMind, though it subsequently cut staff and imposed demanding work schedules.

Although acquisition talks with SpaceX appear to have stalled, Bloomberg reports that the companies may still explore collaboration opportunities, possibly involving Cognition’s use of SpaceX’s substantial computing resources. SpaceX is currently offering its computing capacity to other AI firms, such as Anthropic, until it needs to scale its own AI operations. Both Cognition and SpaceX declined to comment further on these developments.