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SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

reuters.com

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Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#381

Post by pizzafeelsright »

mhl47 wrote: post #357

Everybody remember when Zuckerberg told in an Interview in 2024 that human data does not matter that much or more specifically "individual creators or publishers tend to overestimate the value of their specific content". Something along the line RL-Loops are more important. Hard to square this with that acquisition which seems to be focused on Cursors vast amount of User Data. At least for now.

Zuck is correct because the barrier to a large user base is not skill but market share which requires substantial effort, luck, timing, and patience.

Nobody can put a dent into Coca Cola because of their market. Better products exist but there is really no way to compete against $5 billion in marketing allowing them to maintain $50 billion.

Cursor is ~1MM users a day. $60k/per user is high but considering this is a stock buy, Space X "made" $300BN in the first day that is ~20% or one day of positive movement.

For Musk (with his baggage) to create or steer that user base would require a significant investment and time. Why not just slap some coupons from an initial bump to acquire the user base, user experience, and IP?

Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#382

Post by esskay »

kjksf wrote: post #138
roxolotl wrote: post #6

Wow they are using 80% of what they raised 4 days ago to buy an IDE. Absolutely incredible.

Per latest reporting, Cursor's current annual revenue rate is $4 billion. So SpaceX is buying 15 years of future cashflows, assuming no change in revenue. Which is bad assumption given past growth was gigantic. They are also buying 300-400 employees with proven record of training good coding models. Their expertise will be used to improve Grok Build coding agent. Also, they're using stock, not cash, so effectively th…

> They are also buying 300-400 employees with proven record of training good coding models.

Are they? Their Composer 2.5 models is based on Kimi K2.5, it's not a bespoke model.

Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#383

Post by jacobgold »

yalogin wrote: post #362

What does cursor have? An ide and coding orchestration? They are using Claude or codex for llms, so they get acquired for their user base and tooling? Feels like a lot of money for that given Claude has the majority mindshare.

Musk bought Cursor for its users (lots of devs still use it), as part of yet another attempt at catching up after building Grok and buying OpenAI failed.

Likely, Cursor becomes Grok Desktop or whatever, and eventually uses xAI's coding model if they can make a competitive one.

Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#385

Post by suncemoje »

infecto wrote: post #367
yalogin wrote: post #362

What does cursor have? An ide and coding orchestration? They are using Claude or codex for llms, so they get acquired for their user base and tooling? Feels like a lot of money for that given Claude has the majority mindshare.

People keep saying this but I have yet to find an integrated system that has good tab completion, cheap coding models and works well in an IDE. There are a number of options out there, none of them have captured much market share.

Isn't tab completion long dead?

Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#386

Post by esskay »

osigurdson wrote: post #368

Are people still using Cursor? I haven't in at least a year but perhaps I'm in the minority.

Yup still got it due to paying for a year up front, its still very decent, especially the newer composer 2.5 model, it's cheap and has a ton of usage included so works well as a general day to day tool.

Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#387

Post by dmurvihill »

kjksf wrote: post #138
roxolotl wrote: post #6

Wow they are using 80% of what they raised 4 days ago to buy an IDE. Absolutely incredible.

Per latest reporting, Cursor's current annual revenue rate is $4 billion. So SpaceX is buying 15 years of future cashflows, assuming no change in revenue. Which is bad assumption given past growth was gigantic. They are also buying 300-400 employees with proven record of training good coding models. Their expertise will be used to improve Grok Build coding agent. Also, they're using stock, not cash, so effectively th…

ARR is best month times twelve, not revenue per year.

Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#388

Post by pseudosavant »

yalogin wrote: post #362

What does cursor have? An ide and coding orchestration? They are using Claude or codex for llms, so they get acquired for their user base and tooling? Feels like a lot of money for that given Claude has the majority mindshare.

The have customers actually willing to use and pay for their service.

In a world where even Microsoft is needing to use AWS for capacity beyond Azure, xAI's utilization of their data centers has been so low that they are renting them out to competitors instead.

Nobody wants Grok. If you aren't using GPT-5 or Claude, you are probably using an open Chinese model like Qwen hosted by some provider.

I would expect Cursor to be forced to use the Grok Code models in short order. We'll see how people feel about "Mecha Hitler" writing their code.

Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#389

Post by esskay »

greenoracle9 wrote: post #46

$60B is a huge price, but buying Cursor gives Musk something xAI has struggled to build: a popular coding product with real developer and enterprise adoption. It may be the fastest way to catch up in AI coding. The real question is whether SpaceX ownership improves Cursor or drives its users away.

> The real question is whether SpaceX ownership improves Cursor or drives its users away.

I can't speak for anyone else but I wont be renewing my sub. Funding anything Musk related isn't exactly high up on my list of desires, and theres ample alternatives out there.

Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#390

Post by flakeoil »

kjksf wrote: post #138
roxolotl wrote: post #6

Wow they are using 80% of what they raised 4 days ago to buy an IDE. Absolutely incredible.

Per latest reporting, Cursor's current annual revenue rate is $4 billion. So SpaceX is buying 15 years of future cashflows, assuming no change in revenue. Which is bad assumption given past growth was gigantic. They are also buying 300-400 employees with proven record of training good coding models. Their expertise will be used to improve Grok Build coding agent. Also, they're using stock, not cash, so effectively th…

Revenue is not the same as cashflow.
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