Deal of the Century: How Musk’s $60 Billion SpaceX Stock Deal Cut Off Anthropic’s Oxygen Ahead of IPO
In the world of high technology and artificial intelligence, an event has occurred that radically changes the balance of power on the eve of one of the most anticipated IPOs of the year. Elon Musk made a strategic maneuver by acquiring Anysphere, the developer of the popular AI tool for programmers, Cursor. The deal was valued at $60 billion, and most notably, the payment was made not in cash, but in SpaceX shares.
Anatomy of the Deal: The IPO as a Printing Press
The mechanics of this operation are striking in their sophistication. SpaceX went public on June 12 at a price of $135 per share, but by the following Tuesday, the shares were trading above $211. Musk used the few days of stock market frenzy to "print" $60 billion in the form of new shares and instantly direct them toward the pre-agreed acquisition of Cursor. In essence, the IPO itself became a printing press for this purchase. SpaceX investors, meanwhile, faced dilution of approximately 3.4%, as their stake in the company decreased due to the issuance.
Why Cursor Was Critically Important to Anthropic
Cursor is not just another AI tool. The platform ran on Anthropic's Claude model. Every engineer writing code through Cursor was, in essence, a paying customer of Anthropic "under the hood." It is with this connection that the term "vibe coding" is associated, where a programmer describes a task in words, and the AI writes the code. Anthropic's corporate revenue surged in 2025 largely because Cursor became one of the largest external channels for using Claude.
However, according to data from the service Ramp, Cursor's share among corporate clients began to decline: from 41% in June 2025 to 26% in May 2026, losing ground to GitHub Copilot and Amazon Q. Investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Nvidia valued Cursor at $50 billion, considering this price aggressive. Musk paid 20% more — for a company that, according to analysts, is already losing its leadership in the race.
Blow to Anthropic: Accident or Planned Attack?
The deal came precisely in the interval between Anthropic filing its IPO application and setting the offering price. Musk didn't just buy an asset — he deprived Anthropic of one of its key monetization channels. His own AI division, xAI, was experiencing serious difficulties: by the end of March 2026, all 11 of its co-founders had left the company, and Musk himself admitted that xAI was "built incorrectly from the start." Buying a brand that engineers already trust turned out to be easier than building a competitive product from scratch.
Expert Opinion: This deal is a brilliant example of how financial engineering at the intersection of IPO and M&A can reshape the landscape of an entire industry. For Anthropic, the loss of Cursor is not just lost revenue; it is a signal to the market that their key distribution channel has fallen under the control of a competitor. If the company cannot quickly convince Wall Street that it has alternative growth drivers, one of the year's most high-profile AI IPOs could be under serious threat.