SpaceX agreed to buy Cursor for $60 billion last month.
Investors expected the merger to help Cursor train its own models using SpaceX’s computing power. They also assumed SpaceX would own one of the most popular developer tools on the market.
The bigger question is whether Cursor can keep offering third-party AI models after the deal closes later this year. Third-party models have been central to the startup’s business. Users could choose from Anthropic, OpenAI, or other labs to power their coding assistant.
This approach let customers pick the best or cheapest option at any time. It also helped Anthropic and OpenAI, which list Cursor as a major client in their marketing.
Cursor plans to keep its product as a platform serving models from multiple labs alongside its own, according to sources close to the company.
I doubt this will happen smoothly. Whether Cursor stays model agnostic is a major issue for the industry.
Eno Reyes, cofounder and chief technology officer of Factory, a smaller coding startup, says he does not know if SpaceX will cut off access automatically. “I don’t know if the decision is as black and white,” Reyes told me. “It’s actually super unclear to us.”
Cursor, Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.
Making Frenemies
This is not the first time Cursor’s relationship with OpenAI and Anthropic has been tested. Historically, Cursor distributed the labs’ models through its platform. Now it competes directly with them as OpenAI’s Codex and Anthropic’s Claude Code become core businesses. The SpaceX acquisition will likely intensify that rivalry.
SpaceX and Cursor cannot say much about their future operations because the deal remains subject to regulatory approvals. SpaceX filed documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission stating the deal is not yet closed.
SpaceX will receive Cursor’s assets, customer contracts, and intellectual property. OpenAI and Anthropic will need to deal with Musk if they want to reach Cursor’s users.
Once the deal finalises, SpaceX might decide it does not want to send business to Anthropic and OpenAI. These are two of its biggest competitors in frontier AI development. Anthropic and OpenAI may refuse to sell their models through a product owned by Musk. Both companies’ CEOs, Dario Amodei and Sam Altman, have had conflicts in the past.
Historically, AI labs have not played nicely when selling models to one another. Last year, Anthropic cut off access to Windsurf after news broke that OpenAI was acquiring the startup. The deal ultimately failed. Anthropic cofounder Jared Kaplan said at the time that it “would be odd to sell Claude to OpenAI.” Since then, Anthropic has worked to limit OpenAI and SpaceX from using its Claude AI models.
Times may be changing. Anthropic recently struck a multi-billion dollar deal to buy computing resources from SpaceX. This suggests Amodei and Musk may be willing to put aside their differences to beat their mutual enemy, OpenAI. That compute partnership may be enough reason for Anthropic to continue offering its models in Cursor.
OpenAI may have different reasons to continue working with Cursor. The startup is a major partner of OpenAI. The lab’s executives held preliminary discussions about acquiring it in the past. OpenAI’s startup fund was also one of the earliest investors in Cursor, participating in its seed and Series A funding rounds.
OpenAI’s startup fund is set to see a significant return on its Cursor investment in the form of SpaceX stock, according to sources close to Cursor.
OpenAI says on its website that the company itself is not directly an investor in OpenAI’s startup fund. The fund was originally set up and managed by Altman. It receives investment from outside parties, such as Microsoft, as well as other OpenAI partners.
Is Independence Important?
Palantir CEO Alex Karp highlighted a broader concern in a viral CNBC appearance this week: businesses are getting tired of being locked into frontier AI labs and want more options.
Reyes, the Factory CTO, says that “model independence”—the ability to avoid being tied to any one AI lab’s technology—is important to Fortune 500 companies. Reyes believes this is one of the key advantages independent AI coding startups have over major AI labs. In the past, Cursor highlighted its independence as an advantage.
However, there are significant benefits to working with an AI lab directly and being more than just a platform. Cursor CEO Michael Truell announced at its Compile conference last month that the startup is partnering with SpaceX to train its next AI model. This model will use ten to twenty times more computing power than the company could previously access.
The hope is that the new model will be comparable to, or better than, what OpenAI and Anthropic are offering. In a blog post from April, Cursor said its lack of computing resources held it back. It now believes it can dramatically improve its models by relying on SpaceX’s data centers.
At the Compile conference, Truell added that Cursor is training its new AI model to be “intelligent beyond coding.” Over the last year, Cursor has targeted other potential customer demographics beyond software engineers, shipping features catered toward people like graphic designers. After the acquisition closes, I would not be surprised if Cursor effectively becomes an enterprise AI arm of SpaceX.
Another factor to consider: smaller AI coding startups are struggling to compete with the highly subsidised AI coding subscriptions that OpenAI and Anthropic offer developers. WIRED previously reported that OpenAI and Anthropic’s $200 monthly subscription plan can provide coders with well over $1000 of model usage. Now that Cursor is part of SpaceX, it may also be able to offer similarly aggressive pricing.
When I visited Cursor’s office a few months ago, shortly before news broke about the SpaceX acquisition, I argued that the startup’s main problem was that it did not have enough capital and computing power to achieve its ambitions. I would argue that Cursor is better off inside SpaceX, even if it loses its relationship with OpenAI and Anthropic. But if Cursor can play nice and compete fiercely at the same time, then this might end up being one of the great acquisitions of the AI era.
What it means
The outcome depends on whether SpaceX prioritises its own models or keeps the platform open. If the platform stays open, developers retain choice and competition. If SpaceX restricts access, smaller labs lose a key distribution channel. The deal could reshape how developers access AI tools, shifting power toward the owner of the infrastructure.
