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Elon Musk has pulled off one of the biggest deals of the year: he acquired Anysphere, the developer of the popular AI code-writing tool Cursor, for $60 billion, paying with SpaceX shares. The deal was closed in record time, just days before Anthropic's expected IPO. And this is no coincidence: Cursor was the largest corporate sales channel for Claude models.

Cursor is not just another AI assistant. The platform, powered by Anthropic's Claude model, has become a de facto standard for programmers worldwide. A significant portion of Silicon Valley and engineering teams from the Fortune 500 use Cursor for writing code. Its flagship feature, Composer, built on Claude Sonnet, spawned an entire "vibe coding" movement — where a developer describes a task in simple terms, and the AI writes the code.

From a business perspective, every engineer paying for a Cursor subscription was essentially a "hidden" paying customer of Anthropic. Anthropic's corporate revenue surged in 2025 largely thanks to Cursor, which became one of the largest external channels for using Claude across the internet. By removing this player from the market, Musk dealt a direct blow to one of Anthropic's key revenue sources.

How the Payment Worked: SpaceX's "Money Printer"

The payment mechanism deserves special attention. Not a single dollar in cash — all $60 billion was paid in SpaceX shares. The deal went through regulatory form 8-K, and Musk exercised an option signed back in April. SpaceX shares went public on June 12 at $135 each, and by Tuesday were trading above $211. Musk used several days of stock market frenzy to "print" $60 billion in fresh capital in the form of shares and immediately spent them on a pre-agreed purchase. SpaceX investors, meanwhile, faced dilution of approximately 3.4% — their stake in the company decreased due to the issuance of new shares. The IPO itself became the money printer for this acquisition.

Why This Is Linked to Anthropic's IPO

According to data from Ramp, Cursor's share among corporate clients was declining: from 41% in June 2025 to 26% in May 2026, losing ground to GitHub Copilot and Amazon Q. Investors Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive, and Nvidia valued Cursor at $50 billion, considering this valuation already aggressive. Musk paid 20% more — for a company that, according to analysts, "is losing ground in the race."

According to experts, Musk went through with the deal because his own AI division, xAI, was experiencing serious difficulties. For SpaceX to have a compelling AI story before going public, the easiest path was to buy a brand that engineers already trust. xAI's problems are confirmed: by the end of March 2026, all 11 of its co-founders had left the company, and Musk himself admitted that xAI "was built wrong from the start."

From this, the entire chain emerges: first, SpaceX went public to obtain "currency" — expensive shares. Then Musk used them to buy Cursor, which was losing its leadership position, and paid a premium. Moreover, Cursor was the largest corporate channel through which companies paid for Claude. And the deal came precisely in the gap between Anthropic filing its IPO application and setting the offering price.

It's important to understand: interpreting all of this as a planned attack on Anthropic's IPO is a personal assessment by a number of analysts, not an established fact. However, much now depends on Anthropic's next move. If the company cannot quickly convince Wall Street that the lost revenue from Cursor can be replaced, then one of the most anticipated AI IPOs of the year could be at risk.

Expert opinion: This deal is a brilliant example of how Musk uses SpaceX's capitalization as a lever to reshape the AI market. Anthropic is losing not just a client, but an entire distribution channel that provided a significant portion of its corporate revenue. For Anthropic's investors, this is a worrying signal: if the company does not demonstrate alternative growth sources, its IPO valuation could be significantly lower than expected.