Grok 4.6 Shows How Fast Your AI Options Are Expanding

**Nathaniel Whittemore** (0:00)
A year ago, if you were talking about frontier models, pretty much you were referring to a model from one of either OpenAI, Anthropic or Google. By a couple of months ago, you were probably referring to a model just from either OpenAI or Anthropic. Now, however, things have changed. Over the past couple of months, any conversation about model performance has to include a recognition of Chinese open-weight models that are pushing the frontier of both efficiency and cost. And as of this week, SpaceX AI's Grok is back in the conversation. To just release Grok 4.6 is putting up benchmark numbers that put it in the category of a GPT 5.6 or a Fable 5, and doing so at a fraction of the cost. Although, of course, as we know, AI in the benchmarks tends to be very different than AI in the real world. After some initial testing, while users are not ready to declare Grok 4.6 a Fable or GPT class model yet, they are ready to argue fairly definitively that Grok and SpaceX AI are back in the race.
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Welcome back to the AI Daily Brief Headlines Edition, all the daily AI news you need in around five minutes, and the theme of today is big money. Cognition is seeking another funding round on the back of booming coding agent demand. Bloomberg reports that Cognition is in early talks with investors for new funding at a valuation of $40 billion.
Cognition closed their last round just three months ago, raising a billion dollars at a $26 billion valuation. For those doing the quick math, that means that the company's valuation would be up almost 50 percent in a quarter. And the revenue figures seem to back it up. Sources familiar with the fundraising efforts said Cognition has doubled their revenue run rate to a billion dollars since they were last seeking funding. One source said that Cognition is seeking a billion dollars in this round, giving themselves a substantial increase in resources to address the current agent boom. The numbers also imply that the premium attached to coding agents is growing among venture investors. Cursor is one of the closest comps, and their last fundraising round in March saw them seeking a $50 billion valuation on $2 billion in annualized revenue. That round, of course, ended with SpaceX acquiring the company in a $60 billion all-stock deal. And honestly, if Cognition has the ability to price their round at $40 billion, the SpaceX deal could start to look like a bargain.
Many think that the path that Cursor took with SpaceX feels inevitable for Cognition as well. Writes Richard Wu, I wouldn't be surprised if within the next 6 to 12 months we see one of the hyperscalers preempt Cognition and offer to acquire them for $60 to $100 billion in stock. Given the success with SpaceX acquiring Cursor, the boards of these companies will put pressure on them to make a move.
Jeff Wu says, Google should buy Cognition for $200 billion and make Scott Wu CEO.
Son Deep from Cognition responded, We aren't selling. Also $200 billion, the stock would move three times that in after hours alone.
Next up, we have Lovable, who announced their $400 million Series C round at a $13.3 billion valuation. What's interesting is that you can clearly see how Lovable is evolving just in the way that they describe themselves in their fundraising announcement. In short, Lovable feels to me to be inching farther away from Clawed code and closer towards something like Shopify.