SpaceX Weighs 60 Billion Cursor Deal to Boost AI and Compute Power as IPO Talk Swirls

SpaceX has reached an agreement with the AI coding start-up Cursor that could pave the way for a takeover valued at about 60 billion dollars, according to reporting by The New York Times.

The partnership is aimed at accelerating development of what the companies describe as more useful AI models.

The arrangement is structured to give SpaceX flexibility, with an option to acquire Cursor as early as this year. As an alternative, SpaceX could commit about 10 billion dollars to joint AI projects and the computing infrastructure needed to run and train advanced models.

Why Cursor matters to SpaceX?

While Cursor’s core product focuses on tools that help developers write and edit code, the strategic logic centers on access to scarce compute.

Training and operating frontier AI systems requires massive supplies of high-end chips, data centers and reliable power.

For SpaceX, deeper involvement in AI could support complex engineering, manufacturing and autonomous systems, while also strengthening its position in an ecosystem increasingly shaped by large-scale computing.

Elon Musk has pushed multiple AI efforts in parallel, including xAI, as competition for talent and infrastructure intensifies.

Funding, growth and a compute bottleneck

Cursor, founded in 2022, has been cited as one of the fastest-growing companies in the AI developer-tools space, helped by surging demand for coding assistants.

The New York Times reported that Cursor has attracted significant venture backing and has highlighted limited computing access as a constraint.

Any large transaction would land as SpaceX continues to face questions about its longer-term capital plans, including persistent market speculation about a potential IPO timeline. It remains unclear whether SpaceX would pursue an acquisition before any public listing steps or keep the project as a major internal investment.

Analysts say a deal of this scale would underscore how the AI race is no longer just about models, but also about controlling the hardware and data-center capacity needed to deploy them.

If SpaceX proceeds, the move could reshape how investors value its non-launch ambitions alongside rockets and satellite internet.