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SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

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Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#561
post #148

My 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, there is _no_ cheap model and the default switched to Opus in April, resulting in increased costs across the board.

We have both Claude and Cursor here, as well as agents running GPT, things in AWS Bedrock, etc and its my team handle the bills...when people use Cursor on auto, costs are under control, but there's always a dozen or so whale users who'll switch models manually and blow through the budget like it's not there.

Another thing: "better cost controls". There was for example no way for us to disable Fable in Claude, but we could in Cursor. Again, the opposite experience.

Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#562
post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

SpaceX also wants to put data centers in space. That's the big market for SpaceX and how it ties into AI.

Which hasn't yet been proven to be either technically or economically viable, even on paper. It's a pipe dream.

The cynical viewpoint is that this is Elon capitalizing on current datacenter hype to inflate SpaceX's valuation based on theoretically overcoming tremendous amounts of hard physics problems, over the next 5-10 years. As he did with FSD, Boring Company / Hyperloop, Twitter, etc.

Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#563

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...

xAI is a subsidiary of SpaceX and runs several of the worlds largest compute datacenters.

Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#564
post #475

I 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…

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 difference in a year.

Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#565

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...

Tesla isn't a car company anymore either.

Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#566

I 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…

I like your take and think the key takeaway is that there is no single answer for everyone. It’s like eMacs vs vim. My one question is what popups exist in cursor? It is my daily driver and I cannot recall any popups.

The code suggestions. It's highly distracting and pulls me out of my flow. I know how to code and I don't mind typing. I don't need AI making trivial suggestions. I want it to do exactly what I tell it to do.

Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep in my experience the weakest engs in my org are the ones still using Cursor. not a good outlook IMO

I know this is not always true. But the same people who like cursor still are the same people who are less familiar with the terminal. And I don't know what it is but it feels the less familiar you are with a terminal, the less skilled you tend to be. Definitely not a 100% case. But has been common in my experience

I think it's more of a sign of a good engineer. I know a number of engineers that are good and don't really work with the terminal. On the other hand, every engineer I've worked with who was a 'terminal guy' was great. I think being good with the terminal is a signal that the person is willing to 'dig in' and understand stuff at a lower level.

Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#568

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.

They have millions of conversations with code prompts and diffs and the user telling them the model is taking a wrong turn. This is quite valuable data that is probably already used to tweak Kimi code (composer 2). Moreover they have quite the enterprise client base that I suspect at least a portion of which will jump ship with the acquisition.

Re: SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B

#570

I 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…

On the flipside, I enjoy Cursor now and came back to it after leaving it over a year ago. The 2.5 model is fast as hell and very good. And whatever harness they have it's terrific, great results. I also really enjoy the fact that I can open my website in the Cursor in-app browser and just click and reference stuff. It's a really cracked workflow. The models can only get better for them.

> I can open my website in the Cursor in-app browser and just click and reference stuff.

I’ve never used cursor and have only seen it in a couple work lunch and learn demos. I’ve never seen that feature. I have a lot of use cases where I’m asking cc to move a widget down a little bit or make a data table full width etc. Being able to reference the actual UI would be useful.

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