SpaceX Drops $60 Billion on Cursor to Close the Coding AI Gap
SpaceX has acquired Anysphere, the company behind AI coding assistant Cursor, in a $60 billion deal that closed just days after SpaceX's Nasdaq debut. Anysphere's investors take SpaceX stock in return, with the transaction expected to formally complete in Q3 2026.
The timing is almost theatrical. SpaceX technically had 30 days post-IPO to pull the trigger, but moved almost immediately after listing at a valuation north of $2 trillion. Shares jumped another eight percent on Tuesday, nudging the market cap toward $2.7 trillion. Nothing like a fresh stock price to make an acquisition feel cheaper.
For xAI, the AI division that merged with SpaceX back in February, this deal is essentially a public confession. In AI-assisted coding, one of the very few corners of generative AI that's proven commercially viable, xAI is behind. Anthropic and OpenAI have been eating its lunch. Cursor employees had reportedly already been embedded in xAI's offices for weeks, quietly working on a joint model before the ink was dry. SpaceX confirmed on X that a new model is in training.
Cursor's numbers are hard to argue with. Over 3,000 enterprise customers each paying at least $100,000 annually. Annualised revenue hit $3 billion by late April, up from $2 billion just two months earlier. It's one of the faster-growing software businesses around. The product has leaned heavily on models from OpenAI and Anthropic, which creates an obvious tension: your main suppliers are also your main competitors. Selling to a well-capitalised owner starts to look sensible when the people whose APIs you depend on are busy building products to replace you.
The logic of the deal runs in both directions. Cursor gets access to SpaceX's enormous chip stockpile, which it needs to develop its own models. xAI gets something it's been struggling to hold onto: talent. The division haemorrhaged dozens of engineers and data training staff, and Musk had reportedly been raiding Starlink and Tesla to patch the gaps. As a bonus, Anysphere apparently owns a recruiting firm that places engineers at top AI labs including OpenAI, which is either an interesting strategic asset or the most awkward thing about this entire arrangement.
None of this is cheap. SpaceX recorded a net loss of $4.94 billion in 2025 after absorbing xAI's debt, and capital expenditure doubled to $20.7 billion, with AI taking the largest share.
Meanwhile, OpenAI has moved to acquire cloud platform Ona to shore up its agent infrastructure, and Anthropic keeps quietly expanding its coding business around Claude. The consolidation phase is well underway, and the bills are getting very large.