--- title: SpaceX's AI coding shopping spree: Cursor, then a... description: SpaceX, just days after closing its $60bn acquisition of Cursor, reportedly approached Cognition (maker of the Devin coding agent) about a potential deal.... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/spacex-s-ai-coding-shopping-spree-cursor-then-a-reported-run-at-cognition-cqgttw15k twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: SpaceX's AI coding shopping spree: Cursor, then a reported run at Cognition | daily.dev og:description: SpaceX, just days after closing its $60bn acquisition of Cursor, reportedly approached Cognition (maker of the Devin coding agent) about a potential deal.... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/spacex-s-ai-coding-shopping-spree-cursor-then-a-reported-run-at-cognition-cqgttw15k og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/cqGttW15k.png og:image:alt: SpaceX's AI coding shopping spree: Cursor, then a reported run at Cognition og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # SpaceX's AI coding shopping spree: Cursor, then a reported run at Cognition **[Collections](https://daily.dev/sources/collections)** · 4 min read · 7 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary SpaceX, just days after closing its $60bn acquisition of Cursor, reportedly approached Cognition (maker of the Devin coding agent) about a potential deal. Cognition CEO Scott Wu denied the company is for sale, but Bloomberg reports talks occurred, possibly involving Cognition using SpaceX's compute rather than a straight buyout. Cognition previously raised $1bn at a $26bn valuation, with reported early conversations floating figures north of $40bn. Musk is said to be pushing for SpaceX's AI division to out-earn its rocket business by September. The piece argues Cursor's sale makes sense because it lacked its own frontier models and GPU infrastructure, unlike Codex or Claude, leaving it squeezed on token economics - and frames SpaceX's compute as a potential lifeline. ## Content ## What happened OpenAI announced it's ending its model partnership with Cursor, the AI coding editor, following SpaceX's $60 billion acquisition of Cursor's parent company Anysphere. The cutoff date is November 12, 2026, giving developers roughly ten weeks to adjust. The stated reason is trust, or the lack of it. OpenAI says it can't be confident SpaceX will honor its terms of service, pointing to a track record with Musk-affiliated companies: Twitter/X and xAI have both been accused of contract violations, and Elon Musk admitted under oath that xAI had "partly" distilled OpenAI's models to improve Grok. With OpenAI's upcoming Astra model on the horizon, the company says it's not willing to extend access to a SpaceX-owned entity. OpenAI is invoking a change-of-control provision in its contract with Cursor. It's giving the maximum notice period allowed under that contract. ## What Cursor says Cursor CEO Michael Truell responded publicly, noting that OpenAI models account for only about 5% of Cursor's traffic. He said Cursor is in talks with OpenAI to resolve the situation and is also in discussions with Azure as a fallback. He framed Cursor's relationship with OpenAI as a long one — Cursor was among OpenAI's earliest customers. OpenAI's Tibor Blaho pushed back on the 5% figure, arguing that token count isn't a fair proxy for value or revenue, since frontier models like OpenAI's are more token-efficient than smaller alternatives. The same task that takes 100 tokens on GPT-4 might take many more on a weaker model, inflating the traffic share of those alternatives. ## What Anthropic is doing Anthropic moved quickly to signal it's staying put. Tom Brown, Anthropic's head of compute, publicly pledged to increase compute capacity to support Claude within Cursor. Cursor has been an Anthropic partner since Claude Sonnet 3.5. The optics here are complicated. Anthropic reportedly pays SpaceX around $1.25 billion a month for compute across Colossus data centers — meaning Anthropic depends on SpaceX infrastructure even as SpaceX now owns two of Anthropic's competitors (xAI and Cursor). Some observers noted that Anthropic did exactly what OpenAI is doing now when it cut off Windsurf's Claude access after acquisition rumors surfaced, making the public pledge of loyalty to Cursor feel a bit selective. ## What this means for developers For most Cursor users, the practical impact is limited. OpenAI models were a small slice of traffic, and Claude, Gemini, and Grok remain available. Cursor already ships Grok 4.5 on every plan. Developers who specifically rely on OpenAI models through Cursor have a few options: - Use a personal OpenAI API key directly within Cursor - Switch to OpenAI's own Codex IDE extension - Route through an AI gateway like Amazon Bedrock or Azure For enterprise teams, the transition is less trivial than it sounds. Switching models means revalidating workflows for debugging, refactoring, and multi-file agent tasks. Switching platforms entirely means retraining developers, rebuilding integrations, and repeating security reviews. ## The bigger picture SpaceX acquired Cursor in June and closed the deal at $60 billion. Within days of closing, SpaceX reportedly approached Cognition — maker of the Devin coding agent — about a possible acquisition. Cognition CEO Scott Wu publicly denied any talks, saying the company isn't for sale, though Bloomberg reported discussions did include a possible compute arrangement with SpaceX. The strategic logic behind SpaceX buying Cursor is fairly straightforward: Cursor couldn't compete long-term without owning its own models and GPU infrastructure. Rivals like Codex and Claude Code can subsidize aggressive pricing through favorable API economics. Cursor couldn't. SpaceX's compute capacity changes that equation. Musk dismissed OpenAI's move on X, renewing accusations about Altman and Greg Brockman. Altman hasn't responded publicly in detail. The episode has a certain symmetry to it. Frontier labs are intensely protective of their IP against distillation risks, while simultaneously asking enterprise customers to trust them with sensitive code and proprietary data. The Cursor situation makes that tension visible in both directions at once. ## Questions this post answers ### Did SpaceX acquire Cursor? Yes, SpaceX closed a $60bn acquisition of Cursor. Just five days later, SpaceX reportedly approached Cognition, the company behind the Devin coding agent, about a potential deal of its own, though talks reportedly involved Cognition using SpaceX's compute capacity rather than a straightforward buyout. _Follow how AI coding tool consolidation reshapes vendor choices on daily.dev._ ### Why did Cursor need to be acquired instead of staying independent? Cursor built its interface and workflow on top of open-source models rather than owning frontier models or GPU infrastructure, unlike Codex or Claude whose parent companies control token economics end to end. That left Cursor reliant on others for compute and pricing, making it vulnerable to being squeezed by rivals who can subsidize aggressive pricing with their own data centers. _Developers weighing AI coding tools by their underlying infrastructure can track these shifts on daily.dev._ ### What is Cognition's valuation and did it agree to be acquired by SpaceX? Cognition, maker of the Devin coding agent, previously raised $1bn at a $26bn valuation, and reported early conversations around a SpaceX deal floated figures north of $40bn. CEO Scott Wu publicly denied the company is for sale, though Bloomberg reported that talks did take place. _Anyone evaluating Devin against other coding agents can follow the story on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 57 comments across x (as of 2026-09-01). **TL;DR:** The discussion is dominated by meta-commentary about a long explainer video, but the substantive thread centers on OpenAI cutting Cursor's direct model access after SpaceX's acquisition, with mixed reactions ranging from framing it as trust/distillation protection to dismissing it as a rev-share dispute dressed up as principle. **Sentiment:** 10% positive · 35% mixed · 55% skeptical **The case for** - Some see the cutoff as a reasonable trust-based move given Musk-affiliated companies' past ToS/distillation violations. - One commenter suggests this event validates the need for provider redundancy built into product architecture. **The pushback** - Several argue the 'ban' framing is overstated since BYOK, OpenRouter, and the Codex extension still provide access. - Some read the move cynically as a pricing/rev-share renegotiation disguised as a policy or trust decision. - A few predict this just pushes Cursor toward Claude/Grok, handing OpenAI's rivals a free opportunity. - Complaints that the underlying detail is trivial and didn't warrant a lengthy video. **By community** - x (mixed): Reactions split between debating the technical mechanics of what access actually changes and dismissing the whole story as overblown or cynically motivated. **Hottest debate:** Whether OpenAI's move is a genuine trust/distillation-risk decision or just a disguised pricing/rev-share dispute. **Open questions** - Will Cursor's migration to Azure/Grok/Claude fully offset the loss of direct OpenAI access by the November cutoff? - Does losing privileged distribution meaningfully hurt Cursor given OpenAI models were reportedly only ~5% of traffic? **Highlights** > @theo The detail that matters isn't the ban semantics, it's the date: Nov 12. OpenAI didn't cut Cursor off today, it gave itself a 74-day countdown while still selling API access. That's not a policy change, that's a pricing renegotiation with extra steps. > — [shivamssing25 on x](https://x.com/shivamssing25/status/2094180163991007523) > @theo OpenAI’s policy line is really a distribution boundary: first-party products can subsidize deep tool loops, while API resellers face a different cost and abuse model. The practical test is whether developers get a migration path or a hard cutoff. > — [liuzhao\_666 on x](https://x.com/liuzhao_666/status/2094178424596451565) > @theo I'd bet Cursor leans hard into Claude within the month, OpenAI just gave their biggest rival a free sales pitch. > — [ShinkaIoT on x](https://x.com/ShinkaIoT/status/2094186834482147453) > @theo doesn't this prove cursor needs provider redundancy as product architecture, not backup plumbing > — [sebuzdugan on x](https://x.com/sebuzdugan/status/2094253903403528662) > @theo Skip the video guys, it's just Elon vs Sama. It's funny how Theo milked this beef into a 27 min video. No hate. > — [wfromsea on x · 22 points](https://x.com/wfromsea/status/2094179964149178569) **Source threads** - [x](https://x.com/theo/status/2094172153956680132) · 0 points · 57 comments --- Tags: [#business](https://daily.dev/tags/business), [#ai-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-coding), [#spacex](https://daily.dev/tags/spacex) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/spacex-s-ai-coding-shopping-spree-cursor-then-a-reported-run-at-cognition-cqgttw15k) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"SpaceX's AI coding shopping spree: Cursor, then a reported run at Cognition","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/spacex-s-ai-coding-shopping-spree-cursor-then-a-reported-run-at-cognition-cqgttw15k","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/spacex-s-ai-coding-shopping-spree-cursor-then-a-reported-run-at-cognition-cqgttw15k"},"datePublished":"2026-08-25T14:44:32.573Z","dateModified":"2026-09-01T14:35:34.342Z","description":"SpaceX, just days after closing its $60bn acquisition of Cursor, reportedly approached Cognition (maker of the Devin coding agent) about a potential deal....","image":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CfBuTYcE7Wk/sddefault.jpg","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CfBuTYcE7Wk/sddefault.jpg","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Collections","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Collections","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--fk_6ycEi--/f_auto,q_auto/v1780996001/logos/collections?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/spacex-s-ai-coding-shopping-spree-cursor-then-a-reported-run-at-cognition-cqgttw15k","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":7},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"business,ai-coding,spacex","timeRequired":"PT4M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Collections","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"SpaceX's AI coding shopping spree: Cursor, then a reported run at Cognition"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/spacex-s-ai-coding-shopping-spree-cursor-then-a-reported-run-at-cognition-cqgttw15k#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Did SpaceX acquire Cursor?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Yes, SpaceX closed a $60bn acquisition of Cursor. Just five days later, SpaceX reportedly approached Cognition, the company behind the Devin coding agent, about a potential deal of its own, though talks reportedly involved Cognition using SpaceX's compute capacity rather than a straightforward buyout. Follow how AI coding tool consolidation reshapes vendor choices on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Why did Cursor need to be acquired instead of staying independent?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Cursor built its interface and workflow on top of open-source models rather than owning frontier models or GPU infrastructure, unlike Codex or Claude whose parent companies control token economics end to end. That left Cursor reliant on others for compute and pricing, making it vulnerable to being squeezed by rivals who can subsidize aggressive pricing with their own data centers. 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