SpaceX to acquire AI startup Cursor for $60 billion

SpaceX on Tuesday announced it has entered a formal agreement to buy the artificial intelligence startup Cursor for $60 billion in stock — a hotly anticipated deal. The announcement comes just days after Elon Musk's rocket-maker debuted on the Nasdaq in the biggest initial public offering ever. Cursor built a popular AI coding tool that helps software developers generate, edit and review code, and the company has seen explosive growth since its founding in 2022. In November, Cursor said it crossed $1 billion in annualized revenue. It was also ranked No. 37 on the annual CNBC Disruptor 50 list in 2026. The $60 billion in Class A common stock SpaceX has agreed to pay represents a 3.4% dilution at the conglomerate's IPO valuation. Shares of SpaceX gained roughly 16% on Tuesday, topping Amazon and Microsoft by market cap and making it the fourth most valuable company in the U.S. Musk merged SpaceX with his AI startup, xAI, earlier this year, and the Cursor deal looks set to revitalize the company's efforts to compete with rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI, which also offer popular coding tools. SpaceX has not shared details on Cursor's customer list, momentum or revenue. Cursor's market share had declined from 41% in June 2025 to about 26% in May, according to spending data from Ramp. Anthropic now controls half of that category. SpaceX expects the merger to close in the third quarter, according to an SEC filing. The transaction is subject to "requisite regulatory approvals." "We look forward to working closely with the Cursor team to advance our frontier AI capabilities," SpaceX said in a post on X on Tuesday. Venture capital firm Thrive Capital holds positions in both SpaceX and Cursor, and the combined stake is now worth more than $10 billion, according to a source familiar with the figure. SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell recently told CNBC's Morgan Brennan that the Cursor partnership "makes a huge amount of sense." In April, SpaceX said it had obtained the right to acquire Cursor for $60 billion later this year. If the deal falls through, SpaceX agreed to pay Cursor a "termination fee" of $1.5 billion plus $8.5 billion in computing resources, according to its IPO filings. Cursor CEO Michael Truell said in a post on X at the time that he's "excited to partner with the SpaceX team to scale up Composer," referring to his company's AI model. "A meaningful step on our path to build the best place to code with AI."