SpaceX Secures $60 Billion Option to Acquire Cursor After Preempting Its $2 Billion Fundraising Round
SpaceX announced a $10 billion collaboration deal with AI coding tool Cursor and an option to acquire it for $60 billion, halting a $2B fundraising round that Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive, and Nvidia had been set to join.
Overview
SpaceX announced on April 22, 2026 that it has secured a contractual option to acquire Anysphere, the San Francisco startup behind the AI coding tool Cursor, for $60 billion later this year — a deal that simultaneously delivers $10 billion to Cursor as an immediate collaboration fee and halts a $2 billion fundraising round that had been days away from closing. The arrangement represents one of the largest potential technology acquisitions in history and signals that SpaceX is moving aggressively to position itself as an AI company ahead of its planned summer IPO.
The Machine Herald previously reported that Anysphere was in advanced discussions to raise $2 billion at a pre-money valuation of roughly $50 billion. The SpaceX deal arrived just hours before that round was set to close, according to TechCrunch.
What We Know
The transaction has two components. Cursor has given SpaceX the right to acquire the company later in 2026 for $60 billion; in the meantime, SpaceX will pay $10 billion as a collaboration fee, with the two companies jointly developing what they describe as a next-generation “coding and knowledge work AI,” according to TechCrunch and CNBC. The $10 billion payment is structured as compensation for the partnership work itself, regardless of whether the full acquisition proceeds.
The compute component is central to SpaceX’s pitch. As part of the collaboration, SpaceX is providing Cursor with access to its Colossus supercomputer cluster — described as equivalent to one million Nvidia H100 GPUs — housed across data centers in Mississippi and Tennessee, according to TechCrunch. Cursor’s existing models run on compute purchased from third parties, including Microsoft Azure infrastructure that underpins Claude and GPT model access; access to Colossus would represent a qualitative shift in Cursor’s training capacity.
Acquisition timing is linked to the IPO. According to TechCrunch, the acquisition option is structured to close after SpaceX’s planned summer 2026 IPO. Completing the deal before the public listing would require SpaceX to update its confidential S-1 financial filings with the acquisition, a complication the company is seeking to avoid. If finalized, the $60 billion price would make it one of the largest technology acquisitions on record.
Microsoft evaluated and declined. Sources told CNBC that Microsoft examined acquiring Cursor but ultimately chose not to proceed, electing instead to reinvest in its existing GitHub Copilot ecosystem.
The fundraising round it displaced. The $2 billion round that SpaceX displaced was being co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive Capital, with Nvidia as a participating investor, according to earlier reporting. The SpaceX agreement came together so rapidly that prospective investors were caught off guard — TechCrunch reported SpaceX had offered Cursor access to compute in the weeks leading up to the announcement before the full deal was made public.
Cursor’s rapid valuation climb. Anysphere was founded in 2022 and reached a $2.5 billion valuation in January 2025. By May 2025 it had climbed to $9 billion, and by November 2025 its Series D closed at a $29.3 billion post-money valuation, according to TechCrunch. The $60 billion option price represents more than a 100-fold increase over its January 2025 valuation in roughly fifteen months.
Strategic context: SpaceX as an AI company. The Cursor move follows SpaceX’s merger with Elon Musk’s xAI in February 2026, according to Fortune. Together, these moves reflect an effort to reframe SpaceX as an AI-first enterprise before it hits public markets — a positioning that could command a higher valuation multiple than a pure aerospace company. SpaceX is targeting a valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion for its IPO, according to Techi.
What We Don’t Know
Several material details remain unresolved. The acquisition option has a year-end deadline, but the exact trigger conditions — what, if anything, must happen for SpaceX to exercise it — have not been disclosed publicly. It is also unclear whether the $60 billion consideration would be paid in SpaceX stock, cash, or a combination; and how SpaceX shares, which are not publicly traded, would be valued for the purpose of any stock consideration prior to the IPO.
Cursor currently sells access to Claude, GPT, and other third-party AI models as part of its product. What happens to those integrations if SpaceX completes the acquisition — and whether customers who rely on Anthropic or OpenAI model access through Cursor would see those options restricted — has not been addressed.
Whether the deal will draw regulatory scrutiny also remains an open question. A $60 billion acquisition by a company that merged with a major AI lab just two months prior would likely attract attention from the FTC or DOJ, particularly given ongoing antitrust activity across the technology sector. No regulatory filings have been publicly confirmed as of the announcement date.