Robinhood Ventures has taken a $10 million stake in Cognition, the startup behind the AI coding assistant Devin, the company told Fortune. The investment was made as part of Cognition’s Series E funding round in September, which raised more than $2 billion at a $48 billion valuation. Robinhood is disclosing its participation for the first time, joining backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and Founders Fund.
Cognition said in September that its annualized revenue run rate had reached almost $900 million, up from $492 million in May. The startup was co-founded by Scott Wu, Steven Hao, Walden Yan, and Russell Kaplan.
Sarah Pinto, head of Robinhood Ventures, said the firm has no issue backing rivals in the AI coding space. “It’s not a winner-take-all market,” she said. She noted that Robinhood’s own engineers use multiple AI coding tools, and within its consumer business, Robinhood lets customers choose between different AI models to run its trading agents.
Pinto first met Wu in 2024, before she joined Robinhood, and said she was struck by his conviction about where AI was heading. Even as the technology and market evolved, Wu’s “vision really never changed,” she said, something she described as “pretty extraordinary.” She added, “It’s all about who are the leaders of these companies and do we think that they are these legendary A-plus teams that can bend the future to their will. Scott is very much that.”
The new investment is held through Robinhood Ventures Fund I, a publicly traded closed-end fund that began trading in March and gives everyday investors exposure to private companies. The fund’s holdings include Databricks, Revolut, and ElevenLabs, among others. Investors can buy and sell shares of the fund on the stock exchange, rather than secure a direct stake in those businesses.
Robinhood also told Fortune that the fund’s net asset value (NAV) jumped about 17% for the quarter ended September 30, its biggest quarterly increase to date.
Pinto said getting exposure to private assets can be difficult even for accredited investors, often depending on connections, check size, and a willingness to tie up money for years. “That just doesn’t work for most people, which means that most people have to completely give up on the idea of essentially owning a piece of the most innovative companies and where a lot of the wealth creation is happening,” she said.