Cognition, the company behind AI coding agent Devin, is in early talks with investors on a round that would value it at at least $40bn, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. That is a jump of more than 50% on the $26bn valuation it raised $1bn at in May, less than three months ago.
The number is pinned to an annualised revenue run rate now approaching $1bn, roughly double the $492m the company reported at the last round.
Interesting insights on Cognition valuation
The revenue curve is the whole story. Devin's annual recurring revenue was $1m in September 2024, $73m by June 2025 and $492m in May 2026, with enterprise usage growing 50% month on month for six straight months. The valuation has tracked it step for step: $4bn, then $10.2bn in September 2025, $26bn in May, now $40bn.
At a $1bn run rate, that is a 40x revenue multiple, roughly R720bn for a company founded in 2023.
Founders Fund, backed by Peter Thiel, led the September round, and Cognition bought Windsurf in July 2025 after Google poached its leadership. Customers include Goldman Sachs, Citi, Mercedes-Benz, NASA and the US Army and Navy.
What others are saying about Cognition valuation
TechCrunch reported the talks and noted co-founder Scott Wu's position that Devin is not sold as a human replacement, but for the long-tail grunt work of legacy upgrades and platform migrations. Bloomberg, which broke the story, says prospective backers are expected to put in more than $1bn. Benzinga adds that Cognition calls itself an agent lab working across several foundation model providers so customers can pick on cost and performance.
The grunt work was always the business
Everyone spent two years arguing about whether AI would replace developers while Cognition quietly sold the boring half of the job. Legacy modernisation and platform migration are exactly what SA agencies and dev shops bill for by the hour, and exactly the work nobody enjoys or defends.
That is why enterprise usage compounds at 50% a month. If you run a technical team here, the risk is not that Devin writes your product. It is that the low-margin maintenance revenue quietly subsidising your best engineers goes first.
Price the judgement, not the hours nobody wanted to work.
You might also like our piece on how the SA BPO sector is facing the same automation maths, what developer career frameworks look like when AI eats the junior rungs, and how Anvaya seed funding is building the local version of this.
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