Elon Musk’s SpaceX has agreed to buy Cursor, the artificial intelligence (AI) coding tool built by Anysphere, in an all-stock deal worth $60 billion.
The agreement was confirmed in a securities filing on June 16, just days after SpaceX’s record breaking debut on the Nasdaq pushed the company’s valuation past $2 trillion. Cursor will become a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX once the deal closes, which the company expects to happen in the third quarter of 2026.
The size of the deal alone makes it the largest acquisition of a venture backed startup on record.
A Funding Round That Never Closed
Just weeks before SpaceX confirmed the acquisition, Cursor was deep into a separate process entirely. Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive Capital were preparing to co-lead a $2 billion funding round that would have valued the company at roughly $50 billion, with Nvidia joining as a strategic investor. The round was already oversubscribed according to people familiar with the talks, signaling strong investor appetite for Cursor’s growth.
But that funding round never closed. SpaceX had secured an option back in April giving it the right to either acquire Cursor outright for $60 billion or pay $10 billion to formalize a partnership instead. Cursor chose the acquisition route, effectively pulling the company out of its own funding process and into Musk’s orbit.
Why SpaceX Wanted an AI Coding Tool
SpaceX merged with Musk’s AI venture xAI earlier this year, and the Cursor acquisition extends that strategy into enterprise software. Cursor’s coding assistant is used by more than a million paying developers, giving SpaceX a fast track into a market currently dominated by Anthropic and OpenAI. SpaceX has already said it plans to bring its own AI model to Cursor alongside Grok Build, the coding agent xAI has been developing in parallel.
However, Cursor’s position in that market had been slipping before the deal. Spending data from Ramp shows Cursor’s market share fell from 41% in June 2025 to about 26% in May 2026, with Anthropic now claiming roughly half the category. That decline may have made an acquisition more appealing to Cursor than waiting for the next funding round to play out.
SpaceX shares climbed as much as 16% the day the deal was announced, pushing its market value above Amazon and Microsoft and making it one of the most valuable companies in the U.S.
What Comes Next
Cursor CEO Michael Truell said the company is focused on building the world’s most useful AI models as it joins SpaceX. The deal still needs regulatory clearance, and some industry analysts expect the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to scrutinize a rocket and satellite company buying its way into enterprise software.
