SpaceX’s hunt for AI firepower has collided with a blunt rebuttal from one of the sector’s most valuable independent coding startups. The question is no longer simply whether Cognition could fit into Elon Musk’s expanding AI empire, but whether acquisition discussions happened at all.

The report emerged Wednesday, when Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, said SpaceX had attempted to acquire Cognition, maker of the coding agent Devin. The alleged outreach came as SpaceX seeks to narrow the gap with AI leaders including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, after buying Cursor in a $60 billion deal and earlier bringing Musk’s xAI into the company.¹

Cognition chief executive Scott Wu moved quickly to reject the account. “This is not true,” Wu wrote, adding: “Huge respect for the SpaceX team but Cognition is not for sale and we haven’t been talking.”² His denial directly contests the central premise of the reports, rather than merely saying negotiations had failed.

Still, the accounts leave room for a narrower commercial relationship. Bloomberg reported that acquisition talks were no longer active but that the companies could continue discussing a partnership in which Cognition uses SpaceX computing capacity.¹ Wu did not address that specific possibility.

The strategic logic is clear even as the factual dispute remains unresolved. Cognition, which raised $1 billion in May at a $25 billion post-money valuation and is reportedly exploring funding at a $40 billion valuation, would bring Devin and enterprise customers including Mercedes-Benz, Citi and Goldman Sachs. For SpaceX, AI-assisted coding is one of the most immediate routes to turning sweeping AI ambitions into revenue.¹

For now, both versions point to the same underlying reality: Cognition is a coveted independent asset. But one side describes a deal that cooled; the other says there was never a deal to cool in the first place.