SpaceX Agrees to Buy AI Coding Startup Cursor in $60 Billion Deal

SpaceX announced on Tuesday that it has reached an agreement to purchase the artificial intelligence startup Cursor for $60 billion. The transaction, which also includes Cursor's parent company Anysphere, is slated to finalize during the third quarter of this year, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SpaceX moves to expand its AI capabilities. The acquisition will bolster the company's efforts to compete with rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI, which also offer popular coding tools. Musk merged SpaceX with his AI startup xAI earlier this year, according to the filing.

Cursor built a popular AI coding tool that helps software developers generate, edit and review code. The San Francisco-based company has experienced explosive growth since its founding in 2022. In November, Cursor said it crossed $1 billion in annualized revenue, according to a release at the time.

The deal builds on an option secured in April. In April, SpaceX said it had obtained the right to acquire Cursor for $60 billion later this year. If the deal did not occur, SpaceX had agreed to pay Cursor $10 billion for their collaboration, according to prior reports.

Cursor CEO Michael Truell said in a post on X that he is "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."

Leadership comments and market reaction. SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell recently told CNBC's Morgan Brennan that the Cursor partnership "makes a huge amount of sense." SpaceX shares climbed roughly 5% in premarket trading on Tuesday. SpaceX and Cursor did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.