After swallowing Cursor for $60 billion, SpaceX (SPCX.US) aims to acquire Cognition, which is supported by Peter Thiel! Musk is setting his sights on a trillion-dollar AI empire.

According to media reports citing sources familiar with the matter, Elon Musks U.S. super-tech giant SpaceX (SPCX.US), which focuses on "AI + space exploration," recently reached out to Cognition AI Inc., a leader in AI programming agents backed by Silicon Valley venture capital mogul Peter Thiel, to discuss potential acquisition matters. If this transaction is ultimately realized, it would become SpaceXs second significant acquisition in recent months following its purchase of the AI programming startup Cursor, aimed at enhancing its rapidly growing strength in the artificial intelligence application competition and striving for a trillion-dollar revenue scale by 2030 or even earlier, along with a grand narrative of achieving AI business accounting for 99% of SpaceX's value in less than five years. One insider indicated that Cognition has not actively engaged in discussions concerning this acquisition proposal. The source stated that both parties are currently discussing cooperative matters, including possibly arranging for Cognition to utilize SpaceXs AI computing power infrastructure resources. Due to the confidentiality of the information, the sources requested anonymity. After acquiring Cursor, SpaceXs motive for contacting Cognition is undoubtedly to seize the most crucial corporate entry point in the AI erasoftware development workflows and the high-quality feedback data they generate. From the $28.5 trillion "space AI empire" vision depicted in SpaceX's own prospectus, the strategic significance of acquiring both Cursor and Cognition becomes clearer. This figure of $28.5 trillion is comparable to the nearly $32 trillion nominal GDP of the United States in the first quarter of 2026; within it, the corporate super-application market surrounding AI is estimated at $22.7 trillion, accounting for about 70% of the total U.S. economic output. Following Musks $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, the competition for enterprise-level AI agents has entered the era of computing power mergers and acquisitions. According to a recent report, Cognition was valued at $26 billion in a funding round in May and is already in preliminary discussions with institutional investors for a new round of financing, seeking a valuation of at least $40 billion. Neither SpaceX nor Cognition responded to requests for comments. Cognition's CEO Scott Wu stated on social media this past Wednesday in response to media reports that the company "is not for sale right now, and we have not been in any relevant negotiations." This acquisition contact highlights Musks willingness to continue investing heavily in the arms race for AI computing power and the global super competition in AI applications. SpaceX recently completed a historic IPO and concluded a $60 billion acquisition of Cursor; Cursor is a rapidly growing AI programming startup and a core player in the tech industry's "vibe coding" era. Cognition also focuses on vibe coding to help enterprises automate large engineering tasks efficiently. Musks companies have consistently aimed to build more advanced artificial intelligence application tools to massively simplify various AI application tasks, including enterprise programming matters. Musk's AI business is currently named SpaceXAI, which lags behind AI application competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic in enterprise sales and has implemented a series of layoffs and restructuring. Rapidly achieving a strong growth trajectory in the AI business is a key pillar of Musk's growth strategy for SpaceX. SpaceX has evolved into a comprehensive large tech enterprise spanning rockets, satellite communications, and AI application and computing infrastructure businesses, gaining robust growth momentum due to its historic IPO completed this summer. Founded in 2023, Cognitions flagship product is an AI agent named Devin, which aims to automate programming processes for engineers and has already received backing from top venture capital firms, including General Catalyst and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. Some insiders have indicated that SpaceXs interest in Cognition stems not only from its technology but also its business progress. Agent-based workflows and fully automated programming have likely become the hottest track in the artificial intelligence application field. Leaders in AI applications, including Anthropic PBC, OpenAI, and SpaceX, have invested significantly in their project-level engineering products. Cognition AI itself is one of the purest targets in this investment line of Agentic Software (AI agent-led software). Its core product, Devin, is positioned as an autonomous AI software engineer capable of independently planning, writing, testing, and delivering production code within real code bases and development environments. After completing the acquisition of Windsurf, the company formed a complete AI application software engineering platform comprising "Windsurf/Devin AI agent collaborative development + Devin responsible for asynchronous execution in the cloud + Devin for Terminal handling complex engineering tasks." Devin serves as the cloud autonomous AI engineer, Devin for Terminal acts as a local command line interface, and Devin Desktop is a desktop IDE/console for managing collaboration among multiple agents. Together, they serve clients and engineering teams. For example, Mercedes-Benz has deployed its products into its global R&D and IT systems, where Devin analyzed over 200,000 lines of COBOL code in a four-week pilot project, reducing what was expected to be an eight-month modernization effort to just eight days. Cognitions official website indicates that the company has formed partnerships with many large enterprises, including Mercedes-Benz Group and GE Aerospace. Cognition's business collaborations could enhance SpaceXAI's appeal to potential customers. It is reported that Scott Wu has consistently expressed no intention to sell the company, whether in public or during interactions with investors. During a Bloomberg interview in May, he stated that the $1 billion financing allows us to remain independent and continue to develop as an independent company, which is very important to us." Acquiring a developer entry point for $60 billion and then targeting autonomous software engineers! Musk aims for a full-stack AI empire at SpaceX. SpaceX's ambitions in the field of AI applications are indeed grand, but it is crucial to distinguish accurately: the disclosed $28.5 trillion is the company's overall quantifiable addressable market (TAM), not an AI revenue target; within it, the market for AI application software is estimated at $26.5 trillion, including $2.4 trillion for AI computing infrastructure support, $760 billion for consumer subscriptions, $600 billion for digital advertising, and the critical $22.7 trillion for enterprise applications. In other words, Musk is not satisfied with selling GPU computing power or running Grok; instead, he is attempting to integrate NVIDIA Corporation GPU and data centersGrok foundational modelsCursor developer workflowsDevin-style autonomous agentsX real-time dataStarlink global connectivityStarship and orbital computation, transforming SpaceX into a full-stack AI super platform spanning infrastructure, models, and applications. After acquiring Cursor, SpaceXs core motive in contacting Cognition is undoubtedly to make every effort to seize the most critical corporate entry point in the AI erasoftware development workflows and the high-quality feedback data they generate. Cursor provides a distribution channel for professional developers, enterprise seat revenue, and code interaction data; Cognition possesses autonomous agents capable of consistently executing complex engineering tasks and relationships with large enterprises like Mercedes and GE Aerospace. Integrating these applications into Colossus and Grok could increase the utilization rate of its computing power, reduce third-party model and per-token costs, and create a data flywheel of user taskscode executionresult evaluationmodel retraining; it could also directly enhance SpaceX's internal R&D efficiency in rocket, satellite, communication, and data center engineering. While Cursor has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of SpaceX, the current dealings with Cognition are merely unresponsive acquisition contact and potential computing power cooperation, which cannot be stated as if a transaction has already been completed. Cognition's flagship business, Devin, is positioned as an autonomous AI software engineer: it can independently plan, write, test, and deliver production code upon receiving a goal, as well as execute cross-codebase migration, troubleshooting, code review, and long-term engineering projects. The core of Cursor is an AI-native editor and multi-model workflow platform embedded in developers daily work environments, emphasizing human-in-loop collaboration, codebase retrieval, completion, editing, debugging, and proxy programming. In simpler terms, Cursor resembles the intelligent cockpit that engineers have always used, while Devin functions more like a digital employee that can autonomously take on work orders and deliver results; however, as Cursor strengthens cloud-based agents and Cognition integrates Windsurf, the product boundaries between the two are rapidly converging. Financial data has already demonstrated that the ambitious AI application goals are not merely a vision for SpaceX: in the second quarter, AI-related revenue reached $2.6 billion, a year-on-year increase of 247%, with adjusted EBITDA hitting a positive $1.1 billion for the first time; around $15.8 billion of the company's $18.4 billion capital expenditure in the quarter was directed towards AI computing infrastructure, with computing capacity supported increasing from 1GW in the first quarter to 1.4GW, aiming to exceed 2GW by the end of 2026 and approach 10GW by the end of 2027. SpaceXs management anticipates reaching a run rate of at least $100 billion in annual recurring revenue by December 2026 and has moved its $1 trillion annual revenue target forward to 2030this implies a challenging internal planning of approximately 78% CAGR even starting from a $100 billion annual run rate, rather than a low-risk financial guidance. From the perspective of Wall Street financial giant Morgan Stanley, the market only attributes an implied value of about $12 per share to SpaceX's entire AI business, and anticipates that Cursor's annualized revenue might reach $33 billion by 2030, thus suggesting a baseline target of $300 and a bull market scenario of $600; however, the market's response to huge capital expenditures and long-term goals following the earnings report indicates that investors are not likely to unconditionally accept Musk's grand narrative of AI business accounting for 99% of SpaceX's value in five years. The true determinant for the markets revaluation of SpaceX lies not in the $28.5 trillion TAM, but in whether computing power can stably come online, whether the integration of Cursor can improve gross margins, whether the Grok AI application platform can achieve enterprise-level competitiveness, whether potential autonomous agents similar to Cognition can deliver measurable productivity returns, and whether massive mergers and bond issuances can convert into free cash flow.