Artificial intelligence has become a regular part of the workplace, but many companies are starting to ask a difficult question: is all this AI spending actually worth it? Over the past few months, reports have suggested that several large firms have begun tightening controls around AI usage as costs continue to climb. Some companies have even introduced spending caps after discovering that AI bills can quickly spiral out of control. Against this backdrop, AI startup Cognition has unveiled a rather unusual promise. The company says it is willing to offer customers up to $10 million if its AI coding agent, Devin, fails to deliver enough value.
A Bold Promise From Cognition
Cognition announced what it calls an “AI Productivity Guarantee” through a post on X. “AI should earn its keep,” the company wrote. It added, “If Devin delivers less engineering value than you’re paying for, Cognition will fund your usage until it does, up to $10 million.”
Devin is the startup’s AI-powered software engineering agent designed to handle coding tasks with minimal human involvement. Users can assign projects, bug fixes or development tasks, and the AI works on them independently in the background. The announcement comes at a time when businesses are becoming increasingly cautious about AI spending and demanding clearer returns on investment.
How Does The Guarantee Work?
Rather than measuring AI usage through tokens or prompts, Cognition says it has developed a system that evaluates productivity based on engineering hours saved. According to a blog post by Cognition CEO Scott Wu, the company’s internal estimator reviews completed Devin sessions and attempts to answer two questions: would a human engineer have found the work useful, and how long would it have taken them to complete the same task?
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The estimated hours are then converted into a monetary value using a standard engineering rate. Near the end of a customer’s annual contract, Cognition compares that value against what the customer actually spent.
If the AI-generated value falls short, the company says it will compensate customers with up to $10 million worth of credits.
There Is A Catch
The guarantee sounds generous, but there is an important detail. The compensation is not paid in cash. Instead, customers receive credits that can be used on Cognition’s services in the future. Another point worth noting is that Cognition itself evaluates the productivity of its AI system, meaning the company is effectively measuring its own performance.
