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Deep Cogito
Emerging neolabAI startup building open-weight language models through post-training and iterative self-improvement
Raised, confirmed$43M2 confirmed rounds
Valuation, confirmed—none disclosed
Valuation, reported—no open report
Founded2024San Francisco, CA, US
Key facts
| Field | Value | Source · checked |
|---|---|---|
| Classification | Emerging neolabOpen-weight model developer founded in 2024 by former Google engineers; $43M Series A led by TQ Ventures (Aug 2026) | |
| Founded | Jun 2024 | |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, CA, US | |
| Founders | Drishan Arora, Dhruv Malhotra | |
| Website | deepcogito.com | |
| Careers | deepcogito.com | deepcogito.comchecked 10 Nov 2026 |
| Profiles and work | X @DeepCogitoLinkedInHugging Face, 12 modelsResearch | How links are checkedchecked 10 Nov 2026 |
Funding rounds
Deep Cogito has raised $43M in rounds confirmed by the company, a regulator or two independent outlets. Status rules: methodology.
| Date | Round | Amount | Valuation | Investors | Status | Source · checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Aug 2026 | Series A | $43M | — | Lead: TQ Ventures; Benchmark, Nexus Venture Partners, Atreides Management, South Park Commons, Zscaler | Confirmed | Quartz Deep Cogito raised $43 million in a Series A funding round on Wednesday to advance research into AI post-training and recursive self-improvement+1 more sourcechecked 10 Nov 2026 |
| 24 Mar 2026 | Form D offering | $40M | — | not disclosed | Confirmed | SEC EDGAR Form D: total offering 39999956.0, total sold 39999956.0, first sale 2026-03-24+1 more sourcechecked 10 Nov 2026 |
Notes on these rounds
- 26 Aug 2026 Series A: Total funding to date reported as more than $56 million.
- 24 Mar 2026 Form D offering: SEC Form D reports securities sold under the exemption, not the announced round size.
People
| Name | Role | Before | Now | Source · checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drishan AroraXLinkedInHugging Face | Co-founder & CEO | Google (Led Gemini post-training for AI Search) | Current | qz.com Deep Cogito was founded in 2024 by Drishan Arora, who serves as chief executive, and Dhruv Malrana, chief product officer.checked 10 Nov 2026 |
| Dhruv MalhotraLinkedIn | Co-founder & Chief Product Officer | Google (Led product for AI Search; earlier product manager at Google DeepMind) | Current | techcrunch.com Malhotra was previously a product manager at Google AI lab DeepMind, where he worked on generative search technology.checked 10 Nov 2026 |
Professional facts from public sources only. How people records are handled.
What it has shipped
| Name | Kind | Date | Open weights | Source · checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cogito v2.1 | model | 19 Nov 2025 | Yes | |
| Cogito v2 Preview | model | 31 Jul 2025 | Yes | |
| Cogito v1 Preview | model | 8 Apr 2025 | Yes | deepcogito.com We are releasing the strongest LLMs of sizes 3B, 8B, 14B, 32B and 70B under open license.checked 10 Nov 2026 |
Latest posts on X
The most recent posts from @DeepCogito, the X account of Deep Cogito, quoted as posted. Replies and reposts are left out. How posts are selected.
Today, @DeepCogito is announcing a $43M Series A raise led by @TQVentures, with participation from @benchmark, @nexusvp, @Atreidesmgmt, @spc and @zscaler. That brings our total funding to over $56M. Deep Cogito is a post-training research lab, with a focus on reinforcement learning and recursive self improvement. These are the techniques now driving the frontier of intelligence, and, we believe, the right path to superintelligence. We function as an applied research lab - research and application go together. We build and release open weight models and use our post training stack to work…
Excited to see @NVIDIAAI continue pushing the open model ecosystem forward with Nemotron 3.5 Lightning. At @DeepCogito, we are big believers in open weight, customizable models and the role they’ll play in making frontier intelligence broadly accessible and useful. NVIDIA has been a fantastic partner to startups like us building at the frontier, and we’re excited to be part of the NVIDIA post-training partner ecosystem. Congrats to the @NVIDIAAI team on the launch!
Congratulations @nvidia on an excellent model release! Thank you for giving us early access - we look forward to releasing Cogito v3, building on the Nemotron models.
checked 10 Nov 2026
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