SpaceX strikes $60 billion deal to acquire AI coding startup Cursor ahead of major IPO

SpaceX is working with Cursor and has an option to buy the startup for $60 billion | TechCrunch

SpaceX said it has struck a deal with Cursor to develop a next generation "coding and knowledge work AI," which includes a surprising provision -- an option to buy the popular software development platform for $60 billion later this year. Partnering with and potentially purchasing a leader in the hottest AI product category can only be seen in the context of SpaceX's much-anticipated public offering. Investors seeking more value in the IPO might see its engagement with Cursor as another way to extract value from Elon Musk's increasingly sprawling tech conglomerate. The deal won't shock those who follow the industry closely. Last week, it was reported that xAI would begin renting computing power from its data centers to Cursor, with the coding startup using tens of thousands of xAI chips to train its latest AI model. And last month, two of Cursor's most senior engineering leaders, Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg, left the company to join xAI, where both report directly to Musk. SpaceX described the partnership as a project combining Cursor's "product and distribution to expert software engineers" with SpaceX's Colossus supercomputer, which the company claims has the equivalent compute power of a million Nvidia H100 chips. SpaceX also said that at some undisclosed point later this year, it will either pay Cursor $10 billion for its work or acquire the company for $60 billion. Last week, TechCrunch reported that Cursor was eying a $50 billion valuation in an upcoming private fundraising round. That figure itself reflects an astonishing series of leaps. Cursor was valued at just $2.5 billion in January of last year, climbed to $9 billion by last May May, and was assigned a $29.3 billion post-money valuation when it closed on $2.3 billion in Series D funding in November. Either of those figures would represent a significant expense for SpaceX, which is widely seen to be losing money following the acquisition of xAI and the social media network X and is planning extensive capital investment. The brief statement did not say if either deal could be paid in SpaceX stock. While the move could shore up weaknesses at each company, it also reveals them. Neither Cursor nor xAI has proprietary models that can match the leading offerings from Anthropic and OpenAI -- the same companies now competing directly with Cursor for the developer market. Cursor still uses and sells access to Claude and GPT models even as both firms roll out their own coding tools, an awkward arrangement the SpaceX partnership may be designed to eventually escape.

SpaceX cuts a deal to maybe buy Cursor for $60 billion

With an IPO looming for Elon Musk's SpaceX / xAI / X combo platter of companies, SpaceX has announced an odd arrangement to either acquire the automated programming platform Cursor for $60 billion or pay a fee of $10 billion. Buying this startup that's focused on AI coding could help xAI's tools compete with market leader Anthropic, as well as the other competitors. A report by The Information this week said Sergey Brin has directed Google's "strike team" to help its agentic AI tools catch up, while Sam Altman reportedly declared a "code red" at OpenAI last year before shutting down Sora to focus on the ChatGPT superapp and its own Codex tool.

SpaceX Says It Has Agreement to Acquire Cursor for $60 Billion

SpaceX said it has an agreement to either acquire AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion later this year or pay $10 billion for its work together, as it works to catch up to rivals in AI coding. SpaceX announced the deal in a post on X, saying the companies are "now working closely together to create the world's best coding and knowledge work AI." SpaceX, which is planning an initial public offering later this year, recently merged with xAI, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company. The deal comes shortly after Musk said that xAI is behind on coding tools compared with its peers and vowed to rebuild the company from the ground up. In March, he ordered a round of layoffs. He's also been seeking engineering talent, and has previously hired from Cursor. Cursor had been in talks with investors to raise about $2 billion in a funding round with a valuation of more than $50 billion, not including the investment. Bloomberg reported. Both Nvidia and Andreessen Horowitz were set to participate in the deal. Cursor's AI assistant, launched in 2023, helps programmers write and debug code more efficiently. It's become one of the fastest-growing startups of all time and a central player in tech's "vibe coding" era, as demand surges among software developers for artificial intelligence coding tools. The SpaceX team "has an enormous amount of compute and we think together we can scale up our model efforts and we're really excited about it," Cursor president Oskar Schulz said. "We really like their team." Competition among AI coding startups is heating up as Anthropic, OpenAI and a long list of startups push out products to streamline software development.

SpaceX strikes $60bn deal to acquire AI start-up Cursor

Elon Musk's SpaceX has struck a deal to acquire code-editing start-up Cursor for $60bn in a bid to catch up on rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic. SpaceX has an option to acquire Anysphere, Cursor's parent company, for $60bn this year. If SpaceX decides not to proceed, it would pay the company $10bn, the rocketmaker announced on Tuesday. That would in effect be among the largest termination fees in history. The agreement comes as Musk tries to reel in AI rivals whose models have so far outstripped those produced by his xAI lab. The billionaire founded xAI in 2023 to take on OpenAI and Anthropic, and has since merged the group with SpaceX, which is gearing up for a record-breaking IPO this summer. SpaceX said it was looking to tap Cursor's "leading product and distribution to expert software engineers". Cursor, meanwhile, is seeking access to SpaceX's massive computing resource to develop its own coding tools. "We're very excited about working with them and we think SpaceX is basically the best company in the world when it comes to building out compute. The feats they have been able to pull off are extraordinary," said Oskar Schulz, Anysphere's president.

Spacex says it has option to acquire startup Cursor for $60 billion

April 21 (Reuters) - Elon Musk's SpaceX announced on Tuesday it has been granted the option to either acquire code-generation startup Cursor for $60 billion later this year, or pay $10 billion for a partnership. SpaceX and Cursor are ⁠working closely together to create coding and knowledge work AI, the space company said in a post on X. Cursor did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Two product engineering heads at Cursor, a startup ⁠that sells AI models for coding tasks, said in March they joined SpaceX to contribute to the company's lunar projects ⁠and xAI, Musk's AI startup that is now a part of SpaceX. Musk welcomed ⁠the engineers, Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg, saying, "Orbital space centers and ⁠mass drivers on the Moon will be incredible." Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Vijay Kishore Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

SpaceX and Cursor strike partnership that might end in a $60 billion acquisition

SpaceX and AI company Cursor have struck a new partnership that could see the owner of X buy the AI company for $60 billion later this year. "SpaceXAI and @cursor_ai are now working closely together to create the world's best coding and knowledge work AI," SpaceX wrote in a post on X. According to SpaceX, the deal allows for it to either invest $10 billion into the company known for its AI coding tool, or acquire it entirely "later this year" for $60 billion. If an acquisition were to happen, it's not clear at what point Cursor could officially join the fold of Elon Musk's rapidly expanding and increasingly enmeshed web of companies. SpaceX bought xAI, the billionaire's AI company that also controls X, earlier this year. SpaceX is currently getting ready to go public this summer in what will likely be the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in history. Cursor, which has reportedly been in talks to raise its own $2 billion round of funding, is known for its AI coding tool of the same name that's become the vibe coding platform of choice for many developers. It allows people to use either its own models or those from other leading AI companies, including OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and xAI. In a statement, Cursor said its partnership with SpaceX will "accelerate our model training efforts" while addressing infrastructure-related issues that have slowed it down in the past. "We've wanted to push our training efforts much further, but we've been bottlenecked by compute," the company said. "With this partnership, our team will leverage xAI's Colossus infrastructure to dramatically scale up the intelligence of our models for coding and beyond."

SpaceX says it can buy Cursor later this year for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for 'our work together'

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is displayed outside a Space Exploration Technologies Corp. facility in Hawthorne, California, on March 26, 2026. SpaceX said on Tuesday that the company has struck a deal with artificial intelligence startup Cursor and has the rights to acquire it for $60 billion later this year, or to pay $10 billion for work they are doing together. "SpaceXAI and @cursor_ai are now working closely together to create the world's best coding and knowledge work AI," the company said in a post on X. Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, merged the reusable rocket company with his AI startup xAI in February in a deal he valued at $1.25 trillion. He's now poised to take the combined company public in what will likely be a record IPO.

SpaceX Said to Agree to Buy Cursor for More Than $50 Billion

Erin Griffith and Mike Isaac reported from San Francisco, and Ryan Mac from Los Angeles. SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company, has agreed to buy Cursor, a fast-growing artificial intelligence start-up that makes code-writing software, for more than $50 billion, two people familiar with the situation said. SpaceX is making the deal just as it prepares to go public in what is likely to be one of the largest initial public offerings ever. In February, SpaceX acquired xAI, Mr. Musk's A.I. start-up, in a transaction that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion, according to information sent to investors. Mr. Musk is trying to direct his rocket and satellite manufacturer to focus on A.I. and orbital data centers. Cursor, which has raised more than $3 billion in funding, was founded in 2022 and made waves as one of the fastest-growing A.I. start-ups. It was under pressure in recent months after OpenAI and Anthropic announced competing code-writing products that were embraced by tech companies. The company had been in talks to raise funding in recent weeks. This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

SpaceX secures option to buy AI startup Cursor for $60bn or partner for $10bn

Cursor is aSilicon Valley startup using AI to automate coding as Elon Musk's firm seeks foothold in the AI market SpaceX said it has secured an option to either acquire code-generation startup Cursor for $60bn later this year, or pay $10bn for their new partnership, as it pushes deeper into the lucrative market for AI developer tools. Along with OpenAI and Anthropic, Cursor is one of several Silicon Valley startups that has drawn waves of developers by using artificial intelligence to automate coding, a business where AI companies have found early commercial traction. The deal could give xAI, the Grok chatbot maker that SpaceX merged with in February, a stronger foothold in the AI coding market where it has so far lagged rivals. It also provides Cursor with more computing capacity to develop AI models. "The combination of Cursor's leading product and distribution to expert software engineers with SpaceX's million H100 equivalent Colossus training supercomputer will allow us to build the world's most useful models," SpaceX said in a social media post on Tuesday. Colossus is xAI's supercomputer cluster in Memphis, which it has touted as the largest in the world. The company has been spending billions of dollars on AI infrastructure. The announcement comes ahead of SpaceX's highly anticipated public debut in the coming months, with the company eyeing a valuation of close to $1.75tn and a $75bn fundraise that could go down as the biggest IPO in history. Two product engineering heads at Cursor, a startup that sells AI models for coding tasks, said in March they joined SpaceX to contribute to the company's lunar projects and xAI, Musk's AI startup that is now part of SpaceX. Musk welcomed the engineers, Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg, saying, "Orbital space centers and mass drivers on the Moon will be incredible."

SpaceX says working with Cursor, has option to buy AI startup for $60 bln By Investing.com

Investing.com-- Elon Musk's SpaceX said on Tuesday it is working with Cursor and has been granted the right to acquire the artificial intelligence coding startup later this year for $60 billion. Alternatively, SpaceX can pay $10 billion for a partnership with the startup, the company said in a social media statement. Get more breaking news on SpaceX as it heads for a bumper IPO-- subscribe to InvestingPro "The combination of Cursor's leading product and distribution to expert software engineers with SpaceX's million H100 equivalent Colossus training supercomputer will allow us to build the world's most useful models," SpaceX said. SpaceX's announcement comes just a week after a report said xAI- Musk's AI startup that was folded into SpaceX- would rent out its computing power to Cursor, and that the latter would train its most advanced models on xAI hardware. Last month, two senior engineering heads at Cursor left the startup to join xAI. A report last month showed Cursor eyeing a $50 billion valuation in a private fundraising round, with the company seen as one of the fastest growing AI coding platforms. But both Cursor and xAI lag rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic in producing advanced in-house AI models-- a flaw that the SpaceX tie-up may be aimed at fixing. AI coding has also emerged as one of the most prominent use cases for the fast-growing technology, with Anthropic seen releasing a slew of coding tools in recent months. Still, the Cursor acquisition represents a major expense for SpaceX, as it heads for a blockbuster initial public offering later this year. The firm, which recently acquired Musk's xAI, is targeting a valuation of roughly $1.75 trillion while raising $75 billion.