SpaceX acquires Cursor for $60 billion
Multi-model is the way
SpaceX has no profits yet. SpaceX effectively has become is a way for retail investors to become venture investors. An investment in SpaceX is a bet on Elon Musk as a founder.
Earlier today, SpaceX announced they are exercising their option to acquire Cursor for $60 billion in all stock transaction. Last year I shared a comparison between Windsurf and Cursor. This is a great acquisition for SpaceX in my opinion.
Windsurf’s founders and researchers were brought onto Google’s DeepMind team and remainder of the Windsurf team joined Cognition.
Anthropic cutting access off to Cursor would lead to a transition of API calls routed to OpenAI and Google’s Gemini models. Any decision from the leading labs to cut off Cursor’s access strengthens the balance sheet of their larger competitors. It’s not a moat in the traditional sense. But there is a form of leverage they maintain that Windsurf did not have in the short-term.
-A Tale of Two IDEs: Windsurf vs Cursor July 15, 2025
A year later, Cursor’s team has a $60 billion exit while Windsurf had a $2.5 billion payout and a pawned off team. You could say that going with multi-model routing meant a 24X difference in economic outcomes.
I bring this up because a surprisingly high number of companies and people are single model users. This is the wrong move unless you want to become the next Windsurf instead of the next Cursor.