A space company is buying an IDE for roughly the cost to build 150 of world's most expensive modern hospitals [1]. How is this in SpaceX's interest? Isn't it kinda bizarre that Elon is pivoting SpaceX to something else? 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/16/spacex-spcx-cursor-acquisiti...
SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
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Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
#692A space company is buying an IDE for roughly the cost to build 150 of world's most expensive modern hospitals [1]. How is this in SpaceX's interest? Isn't it kinda bizarre that Elon is pivoting SpaceX to something else? 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/16/spacex-spcx-cursor-acquisiti...
Given xAI's Grok is way behind ChatGPT & Claude on coding capabilities, whereas Cursor was able to get in spitting distance of them w/ Composer 2.5 by simply running post-training on Kimi K2.5, I'm not sure Elon could dream up a more perfect strategic fit.
Cursor likely has the largest, highest quality dataset of any private firm for training new coding models, which would compete SpaceX's trifecta of becoming a viable competitor in the AI race:
1. Access to compute (they have so much that they're renting capacity to Anthropic & Google)
2. Liquidity for R&D+M&A (largest IPO in history)
3. High quality training data (this Cursor acquisition)
> Isn't it kinda bizarre that Elon is pivoting SpaceX to something else?
In a vacuum, absolutely yes. But in the bizarre context of the AI economics, chaotically scrambling to bring everything you need to compete in-house makes perfect sense.
Arguably, when compared with either OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google, SpaceX/xAI now own the most compute, are the most financially liquid, and (assuming the Cursor acquisition goes through) have the largest corpus of high quality training data.
We may very well be a couple of months away from a Grok release that goes toe-to-toe w/ other American frontier models, IMHO.
So when you look at this as a $60B play to capture an additional 10-20% of an estimated $26T total addressable market, it makes a lot more sense. Now, whether that projected TAM is even remotely close to reality (or even just enough to make Cursor worth $60B) is another question entirely.
[1]: https://www.satellitetoday.com/finance/2026/05/20/spacexs-ip...
* edited to add source for IPO numbers & tweak grammar/formatting
Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
#693My honest suspicion is that Musk will focus more and more on AI (and less on space) because he sees it as a path towards his immortality. I expect AI models trained on him combined with millions or billions spent lobbying to allow an AI to own and direct a company. I know this sounds like poorly written sci-fi but I will be only disappointed - not surprised - if post death AI Elon is the richest entity on earth.
Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
#694A space company is buying an IDE for roughly the cost to build 150 of world's most expensive modern hospitals [1]. How is this in SpaceX's interest? Isn't it kinda bizarre that Elon is pivoting SpaceX to something else? 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/16/spacex-spcx-cursor-acquisiti...
The total addressable market (TAM) for SpaceX is finite. There are only so many nation-states and large corporations that want to launch payloads into orbit. And even if their internet service provider is uniquely capable for now, it only fills a strategic need for certain customers. So instead, Musk and Co. need to find bubbling market trends that look like they will have huge gigantic TAMs to justify the potential…
Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
#695Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you saying is going to be over in a year or so?
Right now I think there is an edge to how you construct prompts and config files. There is a large difference between "modify f() to do..." and "modify f() to do... Review the current variables and make sure they are still used consistent with their naming. Look for unreachable and dead code. Examine callers and called functions for side effects from the introduced changes...". I don't think that will make much diffe…
Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
#696I stopped using Cursor when I started getting comfortable with Codex/Claude. Cursor is just annoying with the constant popups and it's just not as good. Now my workflow is to use my normal editor, add a todo describing what I want, and then ask Codex+gpt-5.5 to implement it. It absolutely nails it. Using codex is so much more like working with a partner vs the noise and annoyance of Cursor. That said, I think we're i…
Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
#697I personally use CC and Zed -- works great. No need for a VSCode-based IDE. I've even dropped JetBrains (and I was a long-time user).
Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
#698It’s the best exit for Cursor. There’s not much of a path for Cursor besides getting acquired. Cursor is a fork of VSCode. How much improvement can you really make? Cursor’s own model is based on a Chinese model. OpenAI and Claude are SOTA for coding. The only selling point for Cursor’s model is that it’s cheap. This is the best outcome for Cursor.
Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
#699My whole team was on cursor for a few months. I enjoyed using it and thought it was the most complete of the agentic coding tools I tried. The thing that got me was the cost. I was switching between Opus and GPT 5.x and was spending anywhere between $500-1000/month. I was using a relatively normal workflow, paste in ticket, plan, execute with dumb sub agents, have the ai test and competing model to validate. The busi…
Our experience has been the direct opposite. The way to get the most out of cursor was to leave it on auto - we saw it average around 3.9 cents per request under the old contract (per-seat pricing) and more like 39 cents per request under the new (single pooled cost for everyone). Composer came in a little higher, more like 50c/r, while the claude models were up into the dollars. Meanwhile, if you use Claude-the-app,…
Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
#700Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use cursor 8+ hours/day at work, and have full (and effectively unlimited) access to Claude Code and Codex - tools which I also use personally. I suspect that your "constant popups" were when you were using the editor - a mode that I'll confess I haven't touched in 3+ months. Workflow in Cursor is actually awesome - I'm a little outdated in how I use it - I still establish goals/objectives, rather than managing the…
There is most certainly still prompt engineering involved. How there can be both the responsivity to different cues like "plan this", "write this", "analyze this", "defend this", "poke holes in this", but not responsivity to the various terminology you provide in your explanations of "this", where to get information about specs/standards/requirements, what details I care about, and therefore can't compromise on, vs w…
For example - I might (real world example from this morning):
"Create a script that installs hashicorp vault and consul, store the data on consul. Then create ahelper script that will fill the vault server with sample data. Add HTTPS support. Now write a framework that reads and decrypts the encrypted data in consul. Support old (pre 1.3) and new (post 1.3 vault). "
That generates a 6 page plan using Opus 4.8 w/1mm context, including notes on what to prioritize, what format to create the scripts in, etc... (My cursor guidance already has a couple months of hints as to what I want in terms of scaffolding unit tests, canonical linux, performance, security, etc...)
That 6 page plan is the "Prompt" - but it's entirely generated by Cursor/Opus. It's there to tweak if you want to emphasize, or provide some taste - but, honestly - it probably does a better job than I would - so ~90% of the time I just accept the plan as is.