Startup Hadrian raises $260 million to expand its AI-powered factories to meet soaring demand
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Bloomberg
12 hours ago
- Bloomberg
Founders Fund, Microsoft-Backed Armada Raises $131 Million For AI Data Centers
Armada, a startup that makes movable AI data centers for use in fields like manufacturing and defense, has raised $131 million from investors in a deal that highlights the broad use cases for artificial intelligence. The round included new investors Pinegrove Capital Partners, Veriten and Glade Brook Capital Partners, as well as more funding from existing investors like Founders Fund, Lux Capital, Microsoft Corp.'s venture fund and Marlinspike Partners. The company declined to provide its valuation.
Forbes
13 hours ago
- Forbes
AI Coding Startup Cognition In Talks To Raise At $10 Billion Valuation
Scott Wu, the CEO and cofounder of Cognition. Cody Pickens for Forbes Cognition, maker of the generative coding assistant Devin, is in talks to raise north of $300 million, valuing the AI startup at $10 billion, according to five people familiar with the deal. Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures are both involved in the deal, the people said. The deal would more than double Cognition's valuation, only months after a funding round led by 8VC, the venture firm led by Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, valued the company at $4 billion in March, per Bloomberg. One source cautioned that the terms of the deal could change because it is still being finalized. The funding round comes after a whirlwind acquisition for Cognition. For months, OpenAI had been rumored to be buying Windsurf, a rival AI coding startup. But in a surprise announcement earlier this month, the startup's founders announced they were instead joining Google in a $2.4 billion deal. Two days later, Cognition said it was buying the remainder of Windsurf for an undisclosed sum. 'The new Cognition will work faster than ever,' CEO Scott Wu said in a video announcing the deal, sitting next to Windsurf's new CEO Jeff Wang. 'We want to redefine how humans and agents work together.' Cognition, Founders Fund and Khosla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Founded in 2023 by three Olympiad-level gold medalist coders, Cognition launched its AI agent Devin last year to much fanfare. A demo video quickly went viral, but the company also garnered criticism from skeptics worried that the company was overhyping Devin's capabilities. 'Software engineering in the real world is just very messy,' Wu told Forbes last year. Since then, the company has won over corporate customers including expense management company Ramp, data platform MongoDB and fintech Nubank. Meanwhile, the generative AI coding market has exploded. Rival Anysphere, maker of the wildly popular Cursor tool, has been heralded as one of the fastest growing startups of all time, with annualized revenue now tallying more than $500 million. It was last valued in June at $9.9 billion in a $900 million round led by Thrive Capital. Sweden's Lovable, another AI 'vibe coding' startup that focuses on non-technical people, has reached $100 million in annualized revenue in eight months, beating Cursor to that milestone. At tech giants, CEOs including Google's Sundar Pichai and Microsoft's Satya Nadella have said more than a quarter of code at their companies are now being written by AI. Cognition president Russell Kaplan told Forbes last year that the company wants Devin to act like 'an army of junior engineers' that could automate coding tasks for enterprise customers. At the time, Wu acknowledged the anxiety it could cause software engineers. 'There really is a lot of fear out there,' he said. 'People have a lot of questions about what happens in this new paradigm.' Iain Martin contributed reporting.
Business Insider
a day ago
- Business Insider
Vice President JD Vance is 'optimistic' about AI automating American jobs
At the Winning the AI Race Summit, a conference hosted by venture capitalists in Washington, DC, Vice President JD Vance said he was "optimistic" about artificial intelligence automating American jobs. Vance was responding to a question asked by podcaster and tech investor Jason Calacanis about how Trump 2.0 is thinking about job displacement because of AI. "For every self-driving car we put on the road, that's four drivers who are going to have their jobs retired," Calacanis, an early Uber investor, added. "For every Optimus robot or humanoid robot that eventually makes it into a factory, that'll be five or six factory jobs." Vance seemed more bullish than alarmed, arguing that AI's impact has yet to be priced into the job market: "If the robots were coming to take all of our jobs, you would see labor productivity skyrocketing in this country," he said. "But actually, you see labor productivity flatlining. What that means, actually, is that our country is under-indexed in technology and not over-indexed in technology." Panelists, including Vance, discussed how the US can dominate the AI race at Wednesday's who's who of venture capitalists, startup founders, and politicians. The topic has become an increasingly acute concern in Silicon Valley and on Capitol Hill as geopolitical tensions rise, following the release of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's powerful R1 model in January, which caught many investors and AI entrepreneurs by surprise. Several other speakers at the event pitched AI as a tool for job creation. Chris Power, founder and CEO of factory automation startup Hadrian, claimed that the company's new production facility in Arizona — expected to open in late 2025 — could create over 350 new factory jobs. While Vance expressed optimism about AI job automation, he criticized tech companies for their reliance on international labor. "On the one hand, you see some Silicon Valley technology firms, especially the big firms, say that they are desperate for workers that they can't find — that they have to use overseas visa programs to find workers," he said. "And yet, at the same time, the college-educated employment rate for STEM graduates in this country seems to be declining. "If you're not hiring American workers from out of college for these jobs, then how can you say that you have a massive shortage?" Vance added.
