SpaceX will proceed with its $60 billion acquisition of AI startup Cursor as the company seeks a competitive advantage over rivals Anthropic and OpenAI following its recent Wall Street debut.
In an April announcement, SpaceX stated it had secured the rights to purchase Cursor or pay $10 billion to collaborate with the company. A regulatory filing on Tuesday confirmed that Cursor will become a wholly owned subsidiary upon the deal’s closure in the third quarter.
Cursor, developed by San Francisco-based Anysphere, is recognized as a leading AI coding assistant. SpaceX noted that Cursor’s extensive distribution among software engineers likely contributed to its appeal, providing access to a new customer base.
Initially, Cursor indicated that its partnership with SpaceX subsidiary xAI would facilitate the development of future AI products utilizing xAI’s extensive data center complex, Colossus, located in Memphis, Tennessee.
Founded in 2022, Cursor has been at the forefront of the emerging trend of “vibe coding,” where AI coding assistants increasingly perform tasks traditionally handled by human programmers. The startup competes with tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex, while also relying on partnerships with these larger AI research firms to underpin its technology.
Cursor’s Composer tool, in conjunction with Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet, played a role in the origin of the term “vibe coding,” coined by an AI researcher in early 2025 during weekend experimentation.
SpaceX’s public offering was deemed successful, with shares rising 9% prior to the market opening on Tuesday, following the company’s debut on Friday.
