Robinhood Quietly Put $10 Million Into AI Coder Cognition at $48 Billion Value

Robinhood Ventures cut Cognition a $10 million check, the company told Fortune, disclosing for the first time that it participated in the AI coding startup's Series E — a round that raised more than $2 billion at a $48 billion valuation in September.

The bet gives Robinhood's venture arm stakes in two of the fiercest competitors in AI coding. It previously invested $75 million in OpenAI back in April. OpenAI's Codex, Anthropic's Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, and Cognition's Devin are all fighting for developers' attention.

Sarah Pinto, head of Robinhood Ventures, doesn't see a conflict. "It's not a winner-take-all market," she said. Robinhood's own engineers use multiple AI coding tools, she noted. Within its consumer business, Robinhood lets customers choose between different AI models to run its trading agents.

What does the deal change for investors?

The Cognition stake sits inside Robinhood Ventures Fund I, a publicly traded closed-end fund that began trading in March. It gives everyday investors exposure to private companies — holdings include Databricks, Revolut, and ElevenLabs — without needing to secure a direct stake. You can buy and sell shares on the stock exchange like any other fund.

The fund is performing. Robinhood told Fortune its net asset value jumped about 17% for the quarter ended September 30 — its biggest quarterly increase to date. That's roughly the kind of quarter most public equity funds would call a great year.

Cognition, for its part, is growing fast enough to justify the valuation. The startup said in September that its annualized revenue run rate had reached almost $900 million, up from $492 million in May — nearly doubling in four months. Robinhood joins high-profile Series E backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and Founders Fund.

Why Pinto backed this founder

The numbers weren't the whole story. Pinto first met Cognition cofounder and CEO Scott Wu in 2024, before she joined Robinhood, and was struck by his conviction about where AI was heading. Even as the technology and market shifted, Wu's "vision really never changed," she said — something she called "pretty extraordinary."

"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," Pinto said. "Scott is very much that." Cognition's cofounders also include Steven Hao, Walden Yan, and Russell Kaplan.

The bigger play: democratizing private markets

The fund fits Robinhood's broader push to open up assets that used to be off-limits. Getting exposure to private companies is hard even for accredited investors, Pinto said. It depends on connections, who can write the largest checks, and a willingness to lock 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.

That's the real signal for practitioners: a listed vehicle holding stakes in Cognition, OpenAI-adjacent plays, and Databricks means retail flows can now price venture-backed AI winners quarterly. If the NAV keeps climbing the way it did last quarter, expect more brokerages to copy the structure.