SpaceX buys Cursor for $60 billion, eyes AI edge

SpaceX’s $60 – SpaceX is moving forward with its planned $60 billion acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor, with the company saying Cursor will become a wholly owned subsidiary when the deal closes in the third quarter. The move comes as SpaceX, fresh off its Wall Street d

SpaceX is set to turn up the pressure in artificial intelligence with a deal that’s as big in price as it is in ambition: it will move ahead with its planned $60 billion acquisition of Cursor.

In a regulatory filing made Tuesday, SpaceX said Cursor will become a wholly owned subsidiary once the deal closes in the third quarter. The announcement lands at a moment when SpaceX is still riding the momentum of its own debut as a public company last week.

The purchase was first floated in April, when SpaceX said it had the rights to buy Cursor outright, or alternatively pay $10 billion to “work together” with the company. Now the company is choosing the full acquisition route.

Cursor’s appeal. SpaceX has said. is tied to distribution—specifically Cursor’s wide “distribution to expert software engineers.” For a business that wants to widen its reach in AI-driven software. that matters. It’s a path to a new customer base. and it also places Cursor’s technology closer to the kind of developer ecosystem SpaceX is trying to build.

Cursor is built by San Francisco startup Anysphere. The company, which started in 2022, has become known as a popular AI coding assistant. Its rise helped spark what became known as “vibe coding,” a trend that took off as AI tools for writing and debugging code grew increasingly capable.

Before SpaceX moved toward the acquisition, Cursor had pointed to a partnership as part of its growth story. When the potential deal was announced. Cursor said a collaboration with SpaceX subsidiary xAI would let it build future AI products using xAI’s massive AI data center complex Colossus. located in Memphis. Tennessee.

SpaceX’s bet also puts the Cursor relationship in sharper competitive focus. Cursor competes with other coding tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex. But Cursor’s model has not depended on standing alone at the top of the stack. It has relied heavily on partnerships with larger AI research companies for foundational technology.

That dependency is also part of how Cursor helped cement its cultural footprint. The technology’s Composer feature—paired with Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet—was being used by a prominent AI researcher for weekend projects when he coined the phrase “vibe coding” in early 2025.

For SpaceX, the timing is hard to ignore. The company became a public company on Friday in what is widely viewed as a successful debut. Shares have jumped since then and were up 9% before the opening bell Tuesday.

Taken together. the details—SpaceX’s April rights to buy for $60 billion. its plan to close in the third quarter. and Cursor’s position as an AI coding assistant with broad access to expert software engineers—suggest a move designed to turn developer adoption into leverage. The deal also arrives as SpaceX competes for an AI advantage in a market dominated by Anthropic and OpenAI. where tool partnerships and technical foundations have long decided who can ship what next.

SpaceX Cursor Anysphere xAI Colossus AI coding assistant vibe coding Anthropic OpenAI Claude Code Codex Claude Sonnet acquisition Wall Street debut Memphis Tennessee regulatory filing