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SpaceX has exercised its option to acquire Anysphere, the company behind the popular AI coding tool Cursor, in an all-stock transaction valued at $60 billion, a deal that signals the rocket-maker’s sharpening ambitions in artificial intelligence.
In a statement announcing the move, SpaceX said the acquisition was driven by a clear mission: “building the world’s most useful AI models.” The company added that it “looks forward to working closely with the Cursor team to advance our frontier AI capabilities”, language that underscores just how central AI has become to SpaceX’s post-IPO identity.
The deal comes days after SpaceX debuted on the Nasdaq in the biggest initial public offering in history, and less than two months after announcing an initial tie-up between the two companies. The acquisition is meant to help SpaceX’s AI division, built around xAI, which SpaceX merged with earlier this year, catch up to the major AI labs.
The foundation for this deal had been quietly laid for months. SpaceX revealed that its AI arm, xAI, has been jointly training a model with Cursor, which will be released in both Cursor and Grok Build upon completion — a sign that the two companies were already operating as de facto partners before the ink dried.
Launched in 2022, Cursor helped popularise “vibe coding”, a workflow in which AI tools autonomously generate software with minimal human input. By November, Cursor had crossed $1 billion in annualised revenue.
Under the terms of the merger, Cursor shareholders will receive SpaceX Class A common stock based on the implied $60 billion equity value, with the exchange ratio determined by SpaceX’s volume-weighted average closing price over the seven trading days before closing. The transaction is expected to close in Q3 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
Cursor’s market share in the AI coding space had slipped from 41% in June 2025 to roughly 26% by May 2026, with Anthropic now controlling half the category, making the SpaceX lifeline both timely and strategically loaded.
For SpaceX, the bet is straightforward: acquiring one of the most widely used AI developer tools gives xAI the distribution and developer mindshare it has so far struggled to build on its own.
