SpaceX Aims to Expand in AI with $60 Billion Acquisition of Cursor

SpaceX has announced its plans to acquire Cursor, a popular AI coding agent, for $60 billion as part of its expansion efforts in the lucrative AI tools market for enterprises.

The acquisition, announced on Tuesday, comes just days after Elon Musk took SpaceX public, valuing the company at over $2 trillion in his debut on the Nasdaq.

The purchase of Cursor could enable xAI, the creator of the chatbot Grok with which SpaceX merged in February, to strengthen its position in the AI coding domain, one of the top sectors where companies have managed to turn AI into concrete revenues.

This AI offensive is also an essential element of the $28.5 trillion market potential that SpaceX presented to investors.

Cursor is part of the many Silicon Valley start-ups that have attracted waves of developers using AI to automate coding, making it a competitor to current market leaders Anthropic and OpenAI. However, the company has highlighted that access to processing power has limited its growth.

SpaceX has been eyeing Cursor for months. In April, the company revealed an option allowing it to acquire the San Francisco-based company for $60 billion by the end of the year, or pay $10 billion for a partnership.

According to a regulatory document, Cursor will be compensated in stocks as part of this agreement and will not use the proceeds from SpaceX's initial public offering. The transaction is expected to be finalized in the third quarter of 2026.

SpaceX's stock has risen by nearly 10% in pre-market trading, poised to add around $247 billion to its market value of $2.53 trillion at $211.27. The title has soared by more than 56% from its initial public offering price of $135.

If these gains are confirmed, SpaceX will surpass Amazon in terms of market value, becoming the fifth-largest company.

The business activity of Cursor has developed rapidly since its creation in 2022, with an annualized turnover of around $2.6 billion and sales to businesses on the rise, according to data communicated to Reuters at the beginning of the month.

Supported by some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley venture capital, including Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive, as well as Nvidia and Google, Cursor has been in talks this year to raise $50 billion in a new funding round.

According to a regulatory document, SpaceX will pay a $10 billion breakup fee if the agreement falls through due to specific circumstances. SpaceX will also pay a $4 billion breakup fee if the agreement fails due to antitrust issues.

It's unclear whether the agreement will have an impact on SpaceX's data center leases.

The company has recently signed agreements with Anthropic and Google for cloud computing capacity rentals worth approximately $26 billion per year.