Elon Musk’s SpaceX is acquiring the startup behind the popular AI coding assistant Cursor, Anysphere, in a $60 billion all-stock deal aimed at strengthening its foothold in the profitable enterprise AI tools sector.
This move follows months after SpaceX announced a partnership with Cursor, an AI code-generation startup co-founded by Sualeh Asif, who was born in Pakistan.
Last week, the company made a high-profile Nasdaq debut, soaring to a valuation of over $2 trillion.
The acquisition enhances xAI, which SpaceX bought in February, by bolstering its capabilities in AI coding—a rapidly growing area where companies are increasingly turning AI into a significant revenue stream.
Tapping into this market is vital for SpaceX, which has projected its initial public offering (IPO) investors a potential market worth $28.5 trillion, representing the maximum possible revenue it could generate, much of which is expected to come from AI solutions for businesses.
Cursor is among several Silicon Valley startups that have attracted developers by using AI to automate coding tasks, positioning it as a strong competitor to industry leaders like Anthropic and OpenAI. However, Cursor’s growth has been limited by access to sufficient computing power.
“Cursor isn’t on the same scale as OpenAI or Anthropic, but it has developed some very impressive coding models relative to its costs. This is a positive development for SpaceX,” said Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.
SpaceX had been monitoring Cursor for months and proposed in April that it could either acquire the startup for $60 billion later this year or enter into a partnership for $10 billion.
In its IPO filing, SpaceX stated that Cursor’s access to developers’ data—including coding requests and design choices—could help improve its AI models like Grok.
The company announced that it plans to soon release an AI model based on Cursor, as well as Grok Build, a coding assistant developed by xAI that they’ve been training together for several months.
This all-stock transaction, which will not utilize proceeds from SpaceX’s IPO, is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026.
Following the announcement, SpaceX’s stock surged by 10% in early trading, boosting its market cap by approximately $247 billion to around $2.78 trillion. The stock is currently trading at $211.27, up more than 56% from its IPO price of $135.
If the gains hold, SpaceX could surpass Amazon to become the fifth-largest company by market value.