Musk's Strategic Strike: How the $60 Billion Cursor Acquisition in SpaceX Shares Hit Anthropic's IPO
Elon Musk pulled off a deal that reshaped the balance of power in the AI market just days before the long-awaited Anthropic IPO. He acquired Anysphere, the developer of the hugely popular AI coding tool Cursor, for $60 billion, paying with SpaceX shares. To me, this is not just a corporate acquisition, but a carefully planned maneuver that strips Anthropic of one of its key monetization channels.
Cursor was not just a client of Anthropic; it was its "hidden engine" of revenue. Every engineer using Cursor to write code was, in essence, a paying user of the Claude models. The flagship Composer feature, powered by Claude Sonnet, became a favorite tool for a significant portion of Silicon Valley and engineering teams from the Fortune 500. It was Cursor that spawned the term "vibe coding," where a programmer describes a task in words and the AI writes the code. Anthropic's corporate revenue surged in 2025 largely thanks to this stream.
But the most interesting part is the deal's mechanics. Not a single dollar in cash: all $60 billion was paid in SpaceX shares. Musk waited for SpaceX to go public on June 12 at $135 per share, and by the following Tuesday, the stock was already trading above $211. Using this market frenzy, he essentially "printed" $60 billion in fresh capital in the form of shares and instantly spent them on a pre-agreed purchase. SpaceX investors, meanwhile, faced dilution of approximately 3.4%.
Why This Hits Anthropic
Cursor's share among corporate clients, according to data from Ramp, was declining: from 41% in June 2025 to 26% in May 2026, losing ground to GitHub Copilot and Amazon Q. However, Musk paid 20% more than investors like Andreessen Horowitz, who valued Cursor at $50 billion. He bought a company that, according to analysts, was "losing ground in the race," but which was the largest external channel for Claude.
My analysis shows that Musk did this partly due to problems with his own AI division, xAI, which, as he himself admitted, was "built incorrectly from the start." By the end of March 2026, all 11 co-founders had left xAI. Buying a brand that engineers already trust is the fastest way to get a compelling AI story for SpaceX ahead of its public market debut.
Now, Anthropic finds itself in a vulnerable position. The deal took place between the filing of its IPO application and the setting of the offering price. If the company cannot quickly convince Wall Street that the lost revenue from Cursor can be replaced, one of the most anticipated AI IPOs of the year could be under serious threat.
My expert opinion: this is a brilliant, albeit aggressive, move. Musk didn't just buy technology—he cut off a competitor's oxygen supply at the most critical moment. For Anthropic, every day without a convincing response to the market will cost billions in potential market capitalization.