A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is on display outside the Space Exploration Technologies Corp. facility on March 26, 2026 in Hawthorne, California.
Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images
SpaceX announced it has signed a deal with artificial intelligence startup Cursor, giving it the right to either acquire the company for $60 billion later this year or pay it $10 billion for work they do together.
“SpaceXAI and @cursor_ai are now working closely together to develop the world’s best coding and knowledge work AI,” the company said in a Tuesday post about X.
The post was published shortly before The New York Times reported that SpaceX had agreed to buy Cursor for $50 billion, citing two people familiar with the situation. The Times has since updated its article to reflect SpaceX’s post.
In a post about X, Cursor CEO Michael Truell mentioned the company’s AI model and said, “We’re excited to partner with the SpaceX team to scale up Composer.”
“This is a meaningful step on our path to building the best place to code with AI,” Truell wrote.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk merged the reusable rocket company with his AI startup xAI in February in a deal valued at $1.25 trillion. He is now preparing to take the combined company public in what will likely be a record-setting initial public offering.
Cursor is in talks to raise $2 billion at a valuation of more than $50 billion, CNBC confirmed over the weekend. Andreessen Horowitz will co-lead the round, with Nvidia and Thrive Capital also expected to participate. Andreessen and Nvidia also supported xAI.
Cursor develops tools that allow software developers to test coding changes and record actions through videos, logs, and screenshots. For xAI, the deal represents an effort to catch up with AI competitors OpenAI, which develops Codex, and Anthropic’s Claude.
Musk previously used xAI to acquire social network X (formerly Twitter) in an all-stock deal announced in March 2025. After a mass exodus of xAI’s co-founders from the company, SpaceX recently announced the hiring of two programmers from Cursor, Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg.
Tuesday’s announcement comes less than a week after Musk is scheduled to head to court in Northern California in a high-profile lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who was an early investor in Cursor.
SpaceX and Cursor did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
—CNBC’s Deirdre Botha contributed to this report.
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