When SpaceX introduced final month that it had agreed to acquire the widespread AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion, buyers believed the deal could be a boon for each corporations. Cursor would profit from getting the computing assets of a significant AI lab, which it may use to prepare its personal fashions. In flip, SpaceX and Elon Musk would personal certainly one of the hottest AI developer instruments on the market.
What was much less clear was whether or not Cursor may stay an open platform after the deal, or if rival AI labs would proceed letting it supply their fashions. Third-party AI fashions have traditionally performed a important position in Cursor’s enterprise. Whereas the firm has began training its own AI models lately, it has at all times allowed customers to select from a wide range of choices from Anthropic, OpenAI, and different AI labs to energy its coding assistant.
That technique allowed Cursor to supply clients whichever mannequin was the greatest, or most cost-effective, at a given second. It additionally benefited Anthropic and OpenAI, which each rely Cursor amongst their largest clients and feature the startup prominently of their advertising and marketing supplies.
After SpaceX’s acquisition is finalized later this yr, Cursor hopes to proceed working its AI coding product as a platform—serving fashions from Anthropic, OpenAI, and different AI labs alongside its personal—in accordance to folks shut to Cursor.
I’ve my doubts about how this may truly play out, however whether or not or not Cursor stays mannequin agnostic is certainly one of the largest questions hanging over the AI business.
Eno Reyes, the cofounder and chief know-how officer of Manufacturing facility, a smaller AI coding startup that competes with Cursor, says he’s not sure that SpaceX’s rivals will routinely minimize Cursor off simply because it is going to be owned by a competing AI lab. “I do not know if the resolution is as black and white,” Reyes tells me. “It’s truly tremendous unclear to us.”
Cursor declined to remark for this story. Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX did not reply to requests for remark.
Making Frenemies
This is not the first time that Cursor’s relationship with OpenAI and Anthropic has been examined. Traditionally, Cursor complemented the AI labs by distributing their fashions by way of its coding platform. However now it has more and more discovered itself in direct competitors with them as OpenAI’s Codex and Anthropic’s Claude Code have develop into main strains of their respective companies. The SpaceX acquisition will doubtless solely intensify that rivalry.
SpaceX and Cursor can’t say rather a lot about how they’ll function post-acquisition, partly, as a result of the deal has not but closed and stays topic to “requisite regulatory approvals,” in accordance to paperwork SpaceX filed with the US Securities and Change Fee. However SpaceX is poised to get Cursor’s belongings, buyer contracts, and mental property—that means that OpenAI and Anthropic will now have to do enterprise with Musk if they need to attain Cursor’s customers.
As soon as the acquisition is finalized, it’s potential SpaceX will determine it doesn’t need to ship enterprise in direction of Anthropic and OpenAI, two of its largest rivals in the frontier AI improvement area. Anthropic and OpenAI could decide they are unwilling to promote their AI fashions by way of a product owned by Musk, who each corporations’ CEOs, Dario Amodei and Sam Altman, have butted heads with in the previous.
Traditionally, AI labs have not performed properly when it comes to promoting AI fashions to each other. Final yr, Anthropic was fast to cut off access to Windsurf after information broke that OpenAI was buying the AI coding startup (the deal finally didn’t pan out). Anthropic cofounder Jared Kaplan mentioned at the time that it “would be odd to sell Claude to OpenAI.” In the months since, Anthropic has labored to restrict OpenAI and SpaceX from utilizing its Claude AI fashions.
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