SpaceX says it has agreement to acquire Cursor for $60B
by dmarcos on 4/21/2026, 10:13:18 PM
<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/spacex-says-it-has-option-acquire-startup-cursor-60-billion-2026-04-21/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/technology/spacex-says-it-has-option...</a><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/business/spacex-cursor-deal.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/business/spacex-cursor-de...</a> (<a href="https://archive.ph/c2Tac" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/c2Tac</a>)<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-21/spacex-says-has-agreement-to-acquire-cursor-for-60-billion" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-21/spacex-sa...</a>
https://twitter.com/spacex/status/2046713419978453374
Comments
by: qzw
I just want to make the observation that this whole SpaceX IPO is turning out entirely unlike the CDOs that led to the 2008 financial crisis. There's no mixing of AAA level assets with a bunch of subprime stuff and then getting someone to buy it all as AAA. Not at all similar. Completely different. Will turn out just fine this time.
4/22/2026, 12:35:36 AM
by: jesse_dot_id
Every time Musk does anything these days, it further reveals the shell game he's playing with his companies. This is going to be an Enron type of story eventually. I truly wish I had a choice to pull my tax money out of this particular subsidy.
4/22/2026, 12:24:08 AM
by: Lonestar1440
So SpaceX bought a $60B Option on Cursor, plus a bunch of services, for $10B.<p>If strike date comes and Cursor is in fact worth less than $60B... they can move to acquire it for that price. Or just let it "expire". And if it's worth more, they get a savage good deal. If the services were worth $8B anyway, it's hard to lose.<p>It seems less crazy to me through this lens. A straight acquisition, today, at $60B would in fact be crazy.
4/22/2026, 12:26:57 AM
by: nikcub
knee-jerk is that it's weird, but makes sense:<p>* X will have a total of ~2GW of GPU sometime this year largely not doing much outside of 'grok is this true'<p>* despite no longer being in vogue with consumer devs Cursor still has a lot of developer data that can assist in building a model<p>* Cursor have decent enterprise relationships (while for xAI it is ~zero) and that's where the real revenue for llms + agents is<p>* Cursor are paying retail for tokens and competing against the frontier model co's who are also their suppliers. Not sustainable (hence their in-house composer model).<p>* Cursor the product covers the gamut from lovable-style prompt-to-app, an IDE, cli and bugbot<p>* X are using "x bucks" to pay for a potential later acquisition which are arguably overvalued based on the space x IPO hype<p>Option there to give X a window to make it work, otherwise walk away with a $10B breakup fee for access to it's data
4/21/2026, 11:30:50 PM
by: anonymid
I guess the hope is that combining two sub-par coding models (xAI's grok + cursor's composer) and combining the data they have access to, they can build something that can compete with OpenAI / Anthropic in the coding space...<p>I guess I kinda see it... it makes sense from both points of view (xAI needs data + places to run their models, cursor needs to not be reliant on Anthropic/OpenAI).<p>I think I don't see it working out... I just don't see an Elon company sustaining a culture that leads to a high-quality AI lab, even with the data + compute.
4/22/2026, 12:13:59 AM
by: sheepscreek
Anyone saying this is an aquahire has it backwards. SpaceX is acquiring Cursor’s <i>customers</i>, all those enterprises including <i>NVIDIA</i> itself. I believe Jenson Huang is on the record about the engineers using Cursor everyday.<p>As far as I know, xAI’s enterprise market share is non-existent. This is their way to get some much needed customers.
4/22/2026, 1:24:15 AM
by: yungbeto
Why would Elon do this if he knows full well the names X-Code and Codex are already taken?
4/21/2026, 11:48:50 PM
by: tombert
I was required to use Cursor for my job when I first started, but once I figured out how to use the command line version of Codex, I kind of stopped seeing the point. It just kind of seemed like a bloated, overpriced wrapper around what I could do with the included ChatGPT membership I already had for work.<p>Maybe I was missing something, but I do not understand how it is worth sixty billion dollars.
4/22/2026, 12:17:26 AM
by: goldenshale
You sour pusses are wrong. This is a smart move that amplifies a brilliant team from cursor with serious compute, raising the odds Elon can get to the frontier, which is worth so much these numbers will all look like a drop in the bucket.
4/22/2026, 2:00:01 AM
by: theahura
Lots of people in the comments talking about how this is about training data, but surely this is actually about hiring competent people after the mass exodus/firing at xAI?
4/21/2026, 11:58:21 PM
by: goldenshale
You sour pusses are wrong. This is a smart move. Cursor has a brilliant, capable team with serious model chops who will be able to boost the odds of AGI success. They also come with a revenue generating machine.
4/22/2026, 1:57:58 AM
by: i7l
Guess I'll be looking for a replacement for Cursor now...<p>Anyone have recommendations? I like the plan/agent mode and the fact that it's an IDE, so I can use it in the traditional way as well as by yapping with a bunch of agents. Also the Cursor rules I've curated and they do their job well.
4/22/2026, 1:30:52 AM
by: MangoCoffee
This is a classic Elon move. He bundled up his company that is, shall we say, crap, into his most valuable company, then tried to hype it up as much as he could. Like when he promised Tesla cars would self drive in X years but it never happened, then pivoted to AI/robots, then re-routed Tesla’s GPUs to xAI, etc.<p>Cursor might not be the new hotness, but if we believe that agentic coding is the next wave and we’ve gone from asking chatbots to actually using agents for coding, then yes, this move makes sense for Elon to hype up a SpaceX IPO.
4/22/2026, 1:36:43 AM
by: Rapzid
Wow, we are seeing the dark underbelly of the beast here. Nobody talks about cursor anymore for a reason. Look, I'm not saying it's not useful and discounting anyone getting value out of it...<p>But it's clearly not worth 60B dollars in April 2026.
4/22/2026, 12:06:14 AM
by: topherPedersen
$60 billion with a B???
4/22/2026, 2:02:08 AM
by: Me1000
Cursor's statement on the deal (which does not mention the option at all): <a href="https://cursor.com/blog/spacex-model-training" rel="nofollow">https://cursor.com/blog/spacex-model-training</a>
4/21/2026, 11:29:06 PM
by: sippeangelo
That's a hefty payday for a model that barely functions! Every time I run out of API credits and get kicked back to Composer 2 I feel like I'm better off just packing up for the rest of the month.<p>I feel like we're finally at a point where you don't have to constantly argue with and constantly babysit coding models, which makes it even more frustrating when you're suddenly forced to deal with one that ignores your instructions and gets stuck in thinking loops again.<p>I suspect it's the vast troves of training data rather than any tech that Cursor possesses that SpaceX is after...
4/21/2026, 11:13:14 PM
by: vardump
60B. That's a completely crazy price. Great for Cursor, I guess. If it happens, that is.
4/21/2026, 11:25:51 PM
by: dantihanyi
Bloomberg reporting its an agreement to either acquire for $60B later this year or pay $10B to work together <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-21/spacex-says-has-agreement-to-acquire-cursor-for-60-billion" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-21/spacex-sa...</a>
4/21/2026, 10:37:12 PM
by: cj
Rockets, satellites, social media, AI - the only thing missing from the SpaceX hype portfolio is a certain coworking company. That would really set them up for an exciting IPO.
4/21/2026, 10:40:50 PM
by: AirMax98
What are we even doing here.<p>I have no idea what this has to do with aerospace, but I know a bit about software and this does not look great. Cursor is obviously on a serious decline and has little to no moat in the area they are building in (IDE), which we kinda now know is maybe not even the right area (CLI). I feel like this is just a bad move?
4/21/2026, 10:39:24 PM
by: zacyungblut
I feel Cursor isnt’t even worth $6B. What is the moat, the value, the sauce here?<p>The “apply” model to turn LLM output into code changes?<p>I like SpaceX a lot but this really doesn’t make sense at $60B
4/22/2026, 1:46:24 AM
by: alyxya
This is the right partnership to happen. SpaceX has all the compute but is missing the talent for training LLMs, especially on the RL side. Cursor has the talent and RL stack, but doesn't have their own pretrained base model or own their compute. Both will be on a bad trajectory without cooperating because Claude Code and Codex have gained so much momentum already.
4/21/2026, 10:49:14 PM
by: zzleeper
I'm sworn off from Musk-related products, and this will prob make cursor worse (switch to X's LLM for instance). So, any suggestions for switching? Codex; Claude Code? (I like my IDE and I like the freedom to choose a model, which is why I stuck with Cursor even when it felt more expensive)
4/21/2026, 10:43:37 PM
by: throwaway85825
We have reached peak stupid.
4/21/2026, 11:40:28 PM
by: oliyoung
Cursor ($60b) being valued the same as Twitter ($51b inflation adjusted) is _willlld_
4/22/2026, 12:57:42 AM
by: mininao
Dammit, I liked cursor
4/21/2026, 11:50:30 PM
by: woeirua
This feels like another Twitter moment... unless he's absolutely desperate for engineers who can train LLMs. In that case it's basically an acquihire. Otherwise, this makes absolutely zero sense.
4/21/2026, 10:50:01 PM
by: cdrnsf
That's an expensive VS Code fork.
4/21/2026, 10:42:30 PM
by: charles_f
I guess it makes more sense than shoe brands pivoting to GPU provider.<p>Spacex already owns Twitter and xai, trying to post-rationalize with justification like they have servers doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's all accounting at this point.
4/22/2026, 1:27:27 AM
by: lemonish97
What's Cursor's moat here? I'm a bit surprised that xAI/SpaceX needs to buy them rather than building their own VScode forked IDE or an agentic UI/CLI.
4/21/2026, 10:44:22 PM
by: argsnd
$50bn for a harness makes no sense, what am I missing?
4/21/2026, 10:35:34 PM
by: r3451
Elon doesn't know what to do. Ani failed, no one apart from his alt accounts is interested in Grok pictures.<p>Since the firing of several Grok founders, Grok has decreased in capabilities. It is illogical and insults users when called out.<p>So he does what everyone does. Write more dev tools, slap a price on it and hope retail investors will be impressed in the IPO. The $60 billion is of course optional and will just be used in the IPO to inflate the valuation.
4/21/2026, 11:26:18 PM
by: wek
What are the implications of this for Cursor being model agnostic?
4/22/2026, 1:42:45 AM
by: nickvec
I'm out of the loop - what moat does Cursor even have now, and why is it worth $60B?
4/22/2026, 12:13:11 AM
by:
4/22/2026, 1:02:11 AM
by: toomanyrichies
<a href="https://xcancel.com/trq212/status/2046713419978453374" rel="nofollow">https://xcancel.com/trq212/status/2046713419978453374</a>
4/22/2026, 1:10:00 AM
by: wavemode
It looks like this is just an "option" to acquire Cursor at that price? Implying they only plan to exercise the option under certain conditions (such as, one might presume, Cursor actually being worth that much. As right now it definitely isn't.)
4/22/2026, 12:39:28 AM
by: AJRF
I am part of a discord group with about 1000+ devs. I polled them in Jan to see if they had dropped cursor for claude code.<p>80% of those responded (250ish in the group had). Bit of selection bias there from the question - but my impression was Cursor is very much dying to competition from the labs.
4/21/2026, 11:05:04 PM
by: don_neufeld
If Twitter was when Musk jumped the shark this is definitely him sticking the landing.
4/21/2026, 10:56:55 PM
by: mellosouls
Guardian Link:<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/21/spacex-cursor-ai-startup" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/21/spacex-cu...</a>
4/22/2026, 12:27:43 AM
by: kristopolous
Wish I played that interview game better. I saw the success coming from a mile away (2022) but I can't vibe with people in the hire game right. It's like eye contact, smiling, facial expressions, stuff like that.<p>I guess there's a bunch of tools to not suck at this. Anyone had success here? The AI tools say I'm great because they can't pick up the kind of problems I'm talking about.
4/21/2026, 11:43:59 PM
by: babelfish
Good on them to get $10B breakup terms, after the Twitter shitshow
4/21/2026, 10:30:07 PM
by: kommunicate
Hard to know whether development will remain an activity that lives on a local machine for much longer.<p>This could be a lot of money to spend to acquire users that may not be sticky.
4/22/2026, 12:41:58 AM
by: throwatdem12311
Cursor better take the $60B because a VS Code fork with a crappy fine tune of Kimi is not worth that much.
4/21/2026, 11:54:40 PM
by: int32_64
>acquire Cursor later this year for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for our work together.<p>This seems like an elaborate Elon rug pull. A Windsurf situation 2.0
4/21/2026, 11:10:00 PM
by: andreygrehov
I wonder if they are actually 'acquiring' some of the existing contracts between Cursor and X/Y/Z rather than the product itself.
4/22/2026, 12:18:29 AM
by: coalstartprob
my only gripe rn is grok is still a shitty model to use. yeh it scores nearby openai and anthropic on benchmarks, but my personal experience has been underwhelming
4/22/2026, 1:03:08 AM
by: Tyrubias
I’m no fan of Elon Musk, but even from a neutral perspective I’m bewildered by the merger between X, X.ai, and SpaceX and now this acquisition of Cursor. What’s the endgame? How does this help with the whole vision of “we all live in space and mine resources from the Moon and have data centers on Mars”?
4/21/2026, 11:43:32 PM
by: AirMax98
<a href="https://archive.is/gbdJ8" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/gbdJ8</a>
4/21/2026, 10:35:32 PM
by: mercurialsolo
every wrapper either gets acquired or stays long enough to be a zombie startup
4/22/2026, 12:39:09 AM
by: Bloating
My Hair's on Fire! OMG, Republicans Capitalist OMG Pigs! OMG!
4/22/2026, 1:59:10 AM
by: digitaltrees
Well I am glad I built my own IDE now so I can switch off of cursor and don’t have to participate in training the model of an aspiring monopoly.<p>DM me if you want an invite. I am keeping it to a small on purpose.
4/22/2026, 12:48:29 AM
by: syntaxing
60B for Composer 2…that is built from Kimi K2… what ever happened to “Grok being the best”?
4/22/2026, 12:00:10 AM
by: OutOfHere
Complete waste of $60B. It's just a prompt+tools. This is how you destroy SpaceX from the inside.
4/22/2026, 1:34:33 AM
by: dev1ycan
I am so actually beyond sad that I ever trusted Musk, all the signs were there, from the lies with Tesla to the nonesensical point to point "tourist" lies, to the Mars lies, to the fact that the spaceship they are developing right now requires an actual elevator to get astronauts down, it was never meant for humans, it was meant to deploy sats in space even cheaper, outcompete the competition and basically kill human spaceflight as a result... because less profitable human rated spacecraft won't be viable.<p>Oh yeah, did I mention how Starlink is literally already in the close to Kessler Syndrome territory? all it would need is for a strong enough solar storm to hit their sats.
4/22/2026, 1:33:33 AM
by: arlattimore
SpaceX, xAI, Collosus data centers, next space compute, X, Starlink and soon Cursor to join 2, 3 & 4 together?
4/21/2026, 10:49:03 PM
by: fantasizr
reading this thread, I seem to be the only cursor user on earth on the free tier using tab-completes.
4/22/2026, 12:19:57 AM
by: NuclearPM
A text editor?
4/22/2026, 12:41:12 AM
by: tailscaler2026
cursor was interesting about a year ago
4/22/2026, 12:12:48 AM
by: jhack
RIP Cursor.
4/22/2026, 12:24:14 AM
by: benjx88
but What exactly is SpaceX doing in the AI Space (Pun Intended) and Why?<p>these are weird times...
4/22/2026, 12:22:28 AM
by: atlbeer
Is this Cursor the product? Or AnySphere the company?
4/21/2026, 10:35:46 PM
by: albertwang
SpaceX’s announcement (non paywalled):<p><a href="https://x.com/spacex/status/2046713419978453374" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/spacex/status/2046713419978453374</a>
4/21/2026, 11:02:51 PM
by: boznz
Looking forward to seeing where this goes, both companies have a reputation for engineering excellence.
4/21/2026, 10:28:32 PM
by: Rover222
Misleading title on the post - SpaceX has the OPTION to buy them for $60B later this year, or pay $10B for their work together.
4/21/2026, 11:14:13 PM
by: electrondood
xAI is working on virtualizing white collar workers. I'm guessing this is part of that.<p>See also: companies buying up the Slack and email archives of defunct startups, for training data.
4/21/2026, 11:50:27 PM
by: evanwolf
Is X political ideology extending to cursor?
4/21/2026, 11:21:30 PM
by: vemv
Musk must be chronically surrounded by yes-men.
4/22/2026, 1:00:50 AM
by: 5129ah
See also:<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/spacex-says-it-has-option-acquire-startup-cursor-60-billion-2026-04-21/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/technology/spacex-says-it-has-option...</a><p>Personally, I have been granted the option to buy Tesla for $30 trillion by the end of this year or pay $500 billion for a partnership. It'll all happen, I swear.
4/21/2026, 10:59:36 PM
by: bmitc
Government subsidized purchase of a private company. Fantastic. All funded by the taxpayer to send rockets to a dead planet and to burn up all the energy on our alive but suffering planet.
4/21/2026, 10:54:45 PM
by: Marciplan
immediately unsubscribed from Cursor. Hello OpenCode!
4/22/2026, 12:20:54 AM
by: seatac76
Ohh it’s not an acquisition, it’s right to buy later for $60B or we a work together for $10B. Huh?
4/21/2026, 11:04:23 PM
by:
4/21/2026, 11:18:28 PM
by: break_the_bank
really happy for the Cursor team but at the same time disappointed that the biggest non-lab AI company couldn't exist on their own.<p>shows how intense the power laws are around ai and how much of a capital game it is.
4/21/2026, 10:40:50 PM
by: jmyeet
I really don't know what Elon is thinking here because SpaceX's IPO is already precarious, for several reasons:<p>1. It was used to rescue himself and key investors from overpaying for Twitter, which was first rescued through xAI (and I don't know why anyone thought investing in xAI was a good idea but here we are). If our regulators weren't defanged, this deal would've gotten alot more scrutiny (IMHO). Whatever the case, this is all diluting the SpaceX business for overpriced AI vaporware;<p>2. From what I can find, SpaceX's revenue in 2025 was ~$18B with a $5B loss. That doesn't sound like a $1.5T+ company to me;<p>3. The markets are being rigged to make the IPO a success by changing the rules to force passive funds to buy into it with a tiny float (5% instead of the normal 25%); and<p>4. Here's the big one. I think Starship is a badly designed program that's going to take many billions more to complete and commercialize. There's not really a market for bigger payloads (evidence: ~1 Falcony Heavy launch per year) and STarship will effectively have to compete with Falcon 9 at a time when reusable alternatives (eg from the Chinese as well as Blue Origin) are coming to market.
4/21/2026, 11:07:18 PM
by: SwellJoe
lol. Top business genius being a genius again, I see.
4/22/2026, 12:09:25 AM
by: jeffbee
Only 1.5 Twitters. Sort of pathetic!
4/21/2026, 11:33:39 PM
by: jMyles
I imagine none of us had this on our bingo cards.<p>If this is an acquihire, it doesn't compute for me (though I can't say I understand how things work in the world of the 60B level). LLMs are new enough that nobody has a big enough headstart to warrant a 60B personnel change.<p>The IPO angle also doesn't make sense. Musk cultists were gonna buy anyway; this doesn't change that. And for everyone else, who wants to pay down debt on an acquisition whose effect will almost certainly not be palpable in mainstream circles, if at all?<p>I don't fully understand the influence that comes with SpaceX subsidies and government contracts, but I gotta believe that rounding up non-lab AI chops are on that agenda?<p>The exact options - 60B for acquisition (obviously not a cash deal, right?) or 10B for unspecified services rendered... also don't make sense for either of the first two.<p>Is this just a way of the government securing contractors by proxy that wouldn't pass muster if done through the normal channels?
4/21/2026, 11:22:50 PM
by: tim-tday
Fuck. This is a problem.
4/21/2026, 11:32:32 PM
by: throwaway613746
[dead]
4/21/2026, 11:22:01 PM
by: cranberryturkey
[dead]
4/21/2026, 11:30:49 PM
by: kelsey98765431
Time to download windsurf
4/21/2026, 10:54:22 PM
by: seatac76
60 Billion for an IDE?<p>I guess back to Jetbrains it is.
4/21/2026, 10:53:14 PM
by:
4/21/2026, 10:48:42 PM
by: focusgroup0
The other day my colleague asked Grok:<p>"Please estimate Elon's IQ based on his timeline"<p>It estimated 115-130. A decision like this points to the lower end.
4/21/2026, 11:19:56 PM