Citing a Bloomberg report, TechCrunch reported that SpaceX had attempted to acquire AI coding startup Cognition as part of its push to catch up with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google in AI. Cognition CEO Scott Wu quickly disputed the claim on X, saying the story was inaccurate, that Cognition “is not for sale,” and that the two companies haven’t been in talks. Bloomberg reported that the acquisition talks are no longer active, but that the companies are still discussing working together, including potentially Cognition using SpaceX’s compute capacity — the same capacity SpaceX sells to AI players like Anthropic. Wu didn’t address that specific claim, and neither SpaceX nor Cognition responded to requests for comment.

The report follows SpaceX’s $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, another AI coding startup, which closed last week. Cursor and SpaceX had been working together before that deal closed, and this month they jointly released Grok 4.6, a model that scores higher on benchmarks for coding and complex multi-step agentic tasks. The context matters: Musk has told SpaceX employees that in about four or five years AI will be 99% of the company’s value, but the xAI business remains relatively early-stage, has fallen behind competitors, and Grok has faced controversies. AI-assisted coding has become one of the clearest monetization paths, with Anthropic’s Claude Code growth as evidence. Cognition brings coding agent Devin and enterprise customers including Mercedes-Benz, Citi, and Goldman Sachs. Cognition remains one of the largest independent AI coding startups, having raised a $1 billion round at a $25 billion post-money valuation in late May and reportedly entering early talks for a new round at a $40 billion valuation. Last year Cognition also acquired the remaining assets of Windsurf after Google DeepMind acqui-hired Windsurf’s CEO and top research team, after which Cognition laid off 30 people and required remaining staff to accept demanding conditions. That kind of war-time work ethic would align with Musk’s own style. The article doesn’t indicate whether Cognition is actively seeking a deal.