SpaceX bought Cursor for $60 billion. Investors cheered. It seemed like a dream. Get access to serious computing power, build your own models, own one of the hottest developer tools in town. Simple math.
Except nothing about this deal is simple.
The real question isn’t the money. It’s about who gets to play. Third-party models—specifically OpenAI and Anthopic—are the backbone of Cursor. Without them, the tool is hollow.
Cursor lets you pick. Choose the cheapest model. Choose the smartest. Anthropic loves this arrangement. They’re one of Cursor’s biggest clients. They even feature the startup in their marketing. Same for OpenAI. It was a symbiotic loop. Until Elon Musk got involved.
Cursor claims it wants to stay open. They want to serve models from rivals alongside their own, according to insiders. I have doubts. Real doubts. Whether Cursor stays agnostic is the single biggest loose thread in AI right now.
“I don’t know if the decision… is black and white… It’s actually super unclear.” — Eno Reyes, Factory CTO
Cursor won’t comment. Anthropic is quiet. OpenAI is quiet. SpaceX stays silent.
Enemies and Friends
History matters here.
For a long time, Cursor just distributed the models. Easy money for everyone. But the dynamic shifted. OpenAI launched Codex. Anthropic dropped Claude Code. They aren’t just labs anymore. They are direct competitors. The SpaceX deal turns the heat up to max.
The acquisition hasn’t closed. Regulatory hurdles exist. But SpaceX will own the IP. They will own the customers. If you are OpenAI or Anthropic, you now do business with Elon to reach those users. Do they want to? Probably not.
Look at the playbook. Anthropic cut off Windsurf the moment rumors about an OpenAI acquisition surfaced. Jared Kaplan called it “odd.” They’ve spent months locking out competitors. Why would they feed data to Musk’s empire?
Or maybe not.
Anthropic just signed a multi-billion dollar compute deal with SpaceX. Strange bedfellows, Amodei and Musk, against their shared rival: OpenAI. If that compute partnership holds, Anthropic might keep Cursor as a channel. Business is business.
OpenAI is in a tougher spot. They invested early in Cursor. Their startup fund took seed money risks that now yield SpaceX stock. Huge ROI. But does money outweigh rivalry? Altman has clashed with Musk before. This feels like a collision course.
The Independence Illusion
Palantir’s Alex Karp said it on TV. Companies are tired. Locked into one lab. Trapped. They want options.
“Model independence” sells. For the Fortune 500. Eno Reyes argues it’s the main selling point for his company, Factory. Why bet everything on one horse when you can swap engines? Cursor used to say the same thing. Now?
Michael Truell, Cursor’s CEO, changed the narrative. At the Compile conference, he announced a partnership with SpaceX to train their own next-gen model. Ten times the power. Maybe twenty. They used to lack resources. Not anymore.
The goal? Beat the frontier models.
And Cursor isn’t just coding. Truell says the new model is “intelligent beyond coding.” Targeting graphic designers. Other pros. This isn’t just a developer tool. It’s becoming an enterprise arm. SpaceX’s AI branch, effectively.
Here’s the kicker.
Price.
OpenAI and Anthropic subsidize their coding tools heavily. $200/month gets you over $1,000 worth of model usage. It’s unsustainable. Nobody can match it alone. But SpaceX? With Cursor’s new backing, the rules might change.
They might offer the same aggressive pricing. Or maybe they don’t. Maybe the independence dies, and we all just watch the lights flicker out on choice.
