SpaceX acquires AI coding tool Cursor for $60 billion
SpaceX acquires the AI coding tool Cursor for $60 billion in stock. The subsidiary is intended to strategically strengthen Elon Musk's AI portfolio.
(Image: PJ McDonnell/Shutterstock.com)
The rocket company SpaceX is taking over the AI coding tool Cursor. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Elon Musk's company announced that it signed a merger agreement with Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, on June 16, 2026. Cursor will continue to exist as a wholly-owned SpaceX subsidiary, it states. SpaceX is paying $60 billion for the acquisition in the form of SpaceX stock. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026.
SpaceX had secured an option to acquire for $60 billion in April; alternatively, a partnership for $10 billion would have been possible. However, the purchase was initially postponed to implement the planned IPO. The record IPO has injected a lot of fresh capital into SpaceX's coffers, which Musk can now use in the AI arms race. Microsoft had considered acquiring Anysphere but made no formal offer. Cursor itself had also rejected two approaches from OpenAI.
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Given the high sum, the acquisition is considered one of the largest tech deals in recent years. SpaceX, which fully integrated Elon Musk's AI company xAI into its corporate structure at the beginning of 2026, hopes to have a profitable flagship product with Cursor, complementing the xAI AI chatbot Grok, according to media reports. Furthermore, Cursor could also be useful for SpaceX in its own software development for space projects. The popular AI tool for software developers gives SpaceX direct access to the global developer community.
Cursor, in turn, could benefit from xAI's “Colossus” supercomputer, a data center with the power of around 200,000 Nvidia Hopper GPUs. Google and Anthropic are already renting computing power from SpaceX's data centers for their AI services. For Anthropic with Claude Code and OpenAI, the competitive pressure in the field of vibe coding could thus increase significantly.
(mki)
