AI-Powered Coding Startup Anysphere Raises $900M, Triples Valuation to $9B

Maker of AI 'vibe coding' app Cursor hits $9bn valuation

Anysphere, creator of the fast-growing programming tool Cursor, has closed a new round of funding that more than triples its valuation to about $9bn, as money continues to pour into Silicon Valley's hottest artificial intelligence start-ups. OpenAI backer Thrive Capital led a $900mn round for San Francisco-based Anysphere, according to people familiar with the deal. Andreessen Horowitz and Accel are among the other investors who participated. Anysphere was founded in 2022 by a quartet of twenty-somethings who met studying maths and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was previously valued at $2.5bn in January when it raised $105mn, also from Thrive and Andreessen Horowitz. The huge jump in Anysphere's price tag comes after annual recurring revenues grew quickly since its last funding round, rising to about $200mn in April to make it one of the fastest-growing software companies ever. Nonetheless, the dramatic step up in valuation is likely to reignite concerns among some investors about the sustainability of AI company valuations, particularly given recent turmoil in public markets. OpenAI was valued at $260bn in March, after SoftBank committed to lead a $40bn investment round into the company. Two groups founded by former executives at OpenAI -- Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence and Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab -- have also targeted large fundraising rounds. SSI recently secured a $30bn valuation while Murati's company was in talks to raise $2bn at a $10bn valuation, according to people familiar with the matter. Neither has yet released a product. Cursor has won millions of fans among computer programmers for its AI-powered software development toolkit, which its creators say writes almost 1bn lines of working code every day. By using natural language to tell the AI what to make instead of writing code by hand and "autocompleting" updates, it accelerates productivity for programmers, one of the most in-demand skills in the tech industry. Despite competing with tools such as Microsoft's GitHub Copilot, Cursor has customers at tech companies including Stripe, OpenAI and Spotify, according to its website, as well as prominent AI researchers such as Andrej Karpathy. The former Tesla and OpenAI engineer coined the phrase "vibe coding" in February to describe an almost trance-like state of talking to Cursor's AI to create software "where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists". Coding assistants have become a breakout hit among generative AI start-ups, driving huge productivity gains for tech companies. Last month, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said that "well over 30 per cent" of code submitted on its internal software development "involves people accepting AI-suggested solutions". Several AI coding start-ups have emerged since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, including France's Poolside and Silicon Valley-based Windsurf and Replit. As the price tags for foundation model companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic have put them out of reach for all but the richest investors, venture capitalists have increasingly looked to AI application developers such as Anysphere, search app Perplexity and video generator Synthesia as a way into the AI boom. AI app start-ups raised $8.2bn in 2024, more than twice as much as the previous year, according to data from Dealroom.co and Flashpoint. Many enterprise AI apps have quickly generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue but some investors are concerned that this reflects widespread AI experimentation among companies, rather than durable recurring sales. Anysphere, Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Accel all declined to comment.

AI-Powered Coding Tool Anysphere Lands $900M At $9B -- Report

Artificial intelligence-powered coding has become a hit with investors as the use case seems to have taken off inside large enterprises as a way to save developers' time. It seems to have also spurred M&A interest. Last month, it was reported OpenAI is in talks to acquire AI-assisted coding tool Windsurf -- previously called Codeium -- for $3 billion. The deal would be the generative AI giant's biggest acquisition to date, per Crunchbase. OpenAI reportedly tried to buy code-writing startup Anysphere before turning its attention to Windsurf. Whether it's coding, model design or security, big money continues to pour into AI. Per Crunchbase's global funding report, AI was the leading sector for venture funding in the first quarter, with $59.6 billion invested. The first quarter marked the strongest quarter for AI funding ever, with an astonishing 53% of global funding going to the AI sector alone.

AI code editor startup Anysphere reportedly closes $900M funding round - SiliconANGLE

AI code editor startup Anysphere reportedly closes $900M funding round Anysphere Inc., the startup behind the popular Cursor code editor, has reportedly raised $900 million in funding. Sources told the Financial Times late Sunday that Thrive Capital led the investment. The venture capital firm previously led OpenAI's $6.6 billion raise last year. Thrive Capital was reportedly joined by Andreessen Horowitz, Accel and other backers. It's believed Anysphere is now worth $9 billion, up from $2.5 billion following a January funding round. The valuation jump is likely related to the rapid sales growth the company is experiencing. Its annual recurring revenue reportedly topped $200 million last month. Cursor, Anysphere's flagship code editor, has a split-screen interface: one panel displays the user's code while the other provides access to an artificial intelligence chatbot. Developers can instruct the chatbot to make code changes with natural language prompts. The underlying AI is capable of generating multiple lines of code at once. When it's given a challenging task, Cursor can look for additional information on the web and in a software project's documentation. It breaks down the work into smaller steps to ease processing. After Cursor suggests a code change, users can click an Apply button in the chatbot sidebar to apply the update to their code base. Anysphere provides specialized modes for situations where developers may wish to use Cursor differently. A Manual mode allows users to highlight the specific lines of code in which Cursor should make a change. Usually, the tool automatically determines which code should be modified to implement a change requested by the user. There's also an Ask mode that can help developers familiar themselves with a code base. Under the hood, Cursor is powered by language models from OpenAI, Google LLC and other providers. Last year, Anysphere added an internally-developed model dubbed Cursor-Fast. The company stated at the time that the model's coding capabilities are between GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. A job posting on Anysphere's website hints that it plans to train more custom coding models. The company is seeking a research engineer who can help it build mixture of experts, or MoE, algorithms. A MoE algorithm comprises multiple neural networks that each focus on a narrow set of tasks. When it receives a prompt, the algorithm only uses one neural network to generate output, which saves hardware resources by removing the need to activate the other neural networks. Developing AI models is a costly endeavor. Anysphere's reported funding round should make it easier for the company to finance AI development projects. Additionally, integrating more custom models into Cursor could help Anysphere boost profit margins by reducing its reliance on AI providers such as OpenAI. Those companies charge premium rates for the reasoning models that generate the highest-quality code.

Cursor's Parent Company, Anysphere, Raises $900 Million | AIM

Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, the AI-enabled coding platform, has raised a $900 million investment, led by Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and Accel Ventures, the Financial Times reported on Monday. This is said to more than triple the company's valuation to $9 billion. In January this year, the company also raised $105 million in Series B funding, led by Thrive Capital, a16z, and other existing investors. After the funding round, the company was valued at $2.5 billion. In September 2023, the company raised an initial $8 million in funding from OpenAI's startup fund. In August 2024, Anysphere raised $60 million in Series A from a16z, Thrive Capital, and other investors. According to research from Sacra, the AI-enabled coding platform reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) within 21 months of its inception. It took Cursor only 12 months to reach this figure from $1 million ARR, and was then deemed as the fastest-growing SaaS company of all time. It only took two more months to reach $200 million ARR. Anysphere was founded in 2022 by MIT students and friends Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark, and Aman Sanger. Their vision was to build an integrated development environment (IDE) that was 'AI native', and they launched Cursor in January 2023 on top of Microsoft's Visual Studio Code. Cursor positions itself as an extension of human engineers rather than a replacement. The company asserts, "Using a combination of AI and human ingenuity, they [the hybrid engineers] will out-smart and out-engineer the best pure-AI system." This strategy appealed to users, who favoured Cursor's workflow over that of Devin, an end-to-end autonomous software development tool. Having said that, Cursor competes with several other platforms that offer similar functionalities, contributing to a phenomenon called 'vibe coding'. Tools like Windsurf from Codeium, Bolt.new, Lovable, Vercel's v0, and many more tools directly compete with Cursor.

FTX Creditors Sold Potential $500M Anysphere Stake For $200,000 Before Startup's Valuation Tripled

Feel unsure about the market's next move? Copy trade alerts from Matt Maley -- a Wall Street veteran who consistently finds profits in volatile markets. Claim your 7-day free trial now. A previously overlooked stake once tied to the collapsed crypto exchange FTX may now be worth roughly $500 million, following a sharp rise in valuation at one of Silicon Valley's hottest AI startups. What Happened: Anysphere, the company behind the AI-powered code-writing assistant Cursor, has raised $900 million in new funding, tripling its valuation to $9 billion, Financial Times reported. This surge comes just months after FTX creditors offloaded their equity interest in Anysphere for only $200,000, according to a person familiar with the matter. The massive valuation jump underlines just how costly distressed asset sales can be -- and how rapidly AI start-ups are inflating in value. The new round was led by Thrive Capital, a backer of OpenAI, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz and Accel, according to people close to the deal. Founded in 2022 by MIT alumni, Anysphere was last valued at $2.5 billion in January, when it raised $105 million from many of the same investors. Its flagship product, Cursor, has become popular with software engineers for enabling natural language-based coding and suggesting near-complete code blocks, often replacing manual development work. Also Read: Florida Presses Pause On Bitcoin Reserve Bill: Here's What Happened Get StartedStart Your Crypto Journey Today and Get $500 in RewardsExclusively for new Crypto.com App users, unlock up to $500 worth of rewards in the most popular tokens when you start trading.Get Started The company reportedly reached $200 million in annual recurring revenue by April, making it one of the fastest-growing software firms in the space. Cursor is already used by developers at major tech companies including OpenAI, Stripe and Spotify. Anysphere's rise comes amid broader investor enthusiasm for AI application developers, who are attracting attention now that valuations for foundational model builders like OpenAI and Anthropic have soared beyond the reach of most investors. According to Dealroom.co, AI application start-ups attracted $8.2 billion in funding in 2024, more than double the previous year. What's Next: The dramatic revaluation of Anysphere also spotlights a growing concern among some venture capitalists: that rapid revenue growth may stem more from short-term AI experimentation than from long-term, durable enterprise adoption. Cursor, which Anysphere claims powers close to a billion lines of code daily, competes with offerings such as GitHub Copilot and has gained attention from high-profile technologists like Andrej Karpathy, who described using Cursor as entering a "vibe coding" trance. Read Next: eToro Eyes $5B Valuation In Nasdaq IPO, Sets Price Range At $46-$50 Per Share Image: Shutterstock Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

FTX Dumped Cursor Stake for $200K -- It's Now Worth $500M After $9B Valuation

FTX missed a multi-million-dollar gain in a coding startup. | Credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images Anysphere, the startup behind the AI-powered code editor Cursor, has skyrocketed to a $9 billion valuation , attracting major investors like Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. While its rapid growth has made waves, the real story lies in the missed opportunity of FTX's liquidators . What started as a small investment in Cursor now represents a multi-million-dollar missed opportunity. AI Coding Startup Cursor Hits $9 Billion Valuation San Francisco-based Anysphere, the startup behind the AI-powered code editor Cursor, has secured a significant funding boost that, according to sources familiar with the matter, has raised its valuation to an estimated $9 billion. The latest round, totaling $900 million, was led by Thrive Capital, an early investor in OpenAI, with additional backing from Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and others. Founded in 2022 by four MIT alumni in their twenties, Anysphere has quickly risen to prominence in the generative AI space. Just months ago, the company raised $105 million at a $2.5 billion valuation, making this new deal a remarkable tripling in value in a short period. The dramatic leap in valuation is primarily attributed to explosive revenue growth. By April, Anysphere's annual recurring revenue had soared to approximately $200 million, placing it among the fastest-scaling software startups on record. FTX Liquidators Trashed Alameda's Investment Cursor's $900 million funding round underscores a remarkable surge in confidence around AI development tools. But what's making waves is the connection to Alameda Research and the now-collapsed crypto exchange FTX. Alameda Research, the trading firm once controlled by FTX and led by Sam Bankman-Fried's ex-partner Caroline Ellison, initially invested $200,000 in Cursor during its early stages. Following Bankman-Fried's conviction and FTX's fall into bankruptcy, liquidators decided to sell Alameda's stake in Cursor for the same $200,000 the firm invested initially. In retrospect, that choice has cost them an estimated $500 million in unrealized value, given the current Cursor's evaluation. Cursor's Famous Customers Cursor has captured the attention of tech giants and developers with its AI-powered software development toolkit, writing nearly 1 billion lines of working code daily. The tool accelerates productivity by enabling programmers to use natural language to direct the AI instead of writing code manually, which is especially valuable for highly sought-after coding skills. Despite competing with tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor counts tech powerhouses such as Stripe, OpenAI, and Spotify among its clients, along with notable AI researchers like Andrej Karpathy. Karpathy, a former Tesla and OpenAI engineer, even coined the term "vibe coding" to describe the almost trance-like process of creating software with Cursor's AI.