Days after its massive IPO, SpaceX says it is spending $60 billion to buy Cursor — a bet designed to help Elon Musk’s sprawling rocket / AI / social media behemoth win over lucrative enterprise customers and close the gap with AI rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI.
SpaceX is officially buying Cursor for $60 billion
Fresh off its blockbuster IPO, Musk’s company wants to catch up to OpenAI and Anthropic in enterprise AI.
Fresh off its blockbuster IPO, Musk’s company wants to catch up to OpenAI and Anthropic in enterprise AI.
Photo: Patrick T. Fallon / Getty Images
is a London-based reporter at The Verge covering all things AI and a Senior Tarbell Fellow. Previously, he wrote about health, science and tech for Forbes.
The takeover was not entirely unexpected: SpaceX announced a peculiar arrangement in April in which it agreed to either acquire the programming platform for $60 billion or pay a $10 billion breakup fee. The company had been holding off completing the deal while going public.
In an SEC filing, SpaceX said it expects the deal to close during the third quarter of 2026.
Musk has previously expressed his frustration with xAI’s sub-par coding product, which lags behind popular tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex. Acquiring Cursor, which offers similar tools to automate coding, could help close the gap. The startup has grown explosively in recent years amid booming demand for more efficient programming tools and a shift toward “vibe coding” in the industry.
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