Can Cursor Keep OpenAI and Anthropic Models After SpaceX?
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- SpaceX agreed to acquire Cursor for $60 billion last month, a deal still subject to regulatory approval that would give Musk ownership of one of the most popular AI developer tools on the market.
- Cursor currently lets users choose from models by Anthropic, OpenAI, and other labs, and both AI companies count Cursor among their largest customers and feature it in marketing materials.
- Anthropic cut off AI coding startup Windsurf's Claude access last year after OpenAI's acquisition attempt, with cofounder Jared Kaplan saying it "would be odd to sell Claude to OpenAI" — a precedent that could dog Cursor.
- Anthropic struck a multi-billion dollar compute deal with SpaceX recently, which the article frames as a possible reason for Amodei to keep selling models through a Musk-owned Cursor.
- OpenAI's startup fund was an early investor in Cursor, participating in its seed and Series A rounds, and is positioned to see significant returns via SpaceX stock from the acquisition, per people close to Cursor.
- Cursor CEO Michael Truell announced at the Compile conference that the startup is partnering with SpaceX to train its next model with 10–20x more computing power than it previously had access to, and is training it to be "intelligent beyond coding."
- Factory CTO Eno Reyes says model independence matters to Fortune 500 buyers, but told the outlet it's "super unclear" whether Anthropic and OpenAI will continue offering models through Cursor post-deal.
Why it matters: If Anthropic and OpenAI pull their models from Cursor, developer customers lose a key advantage of model-agnostic tooling at exactly the moment Cursor is scaling its own model ambitions 10–20x with SpaceX compute — effectively turning the deal into a competitive weapon rather than a platform play.
