Musk's $60 Billion Deal: How the Cursor Acquisition Hit Anthropic's IPO
The AI market was shaken by news that directly affects the interests of one of the key players — Anthropic. Elon Musk pulled off a deal to acquire Anysphere, the developer of the popular AI coding tool Cursor, for $60 billion. The payment was made exclusively with SpaceX shares, which in itself is a powerful financial maneuver. But the main intrigue lies in the timing: the deal was closed just days before Anthropic's IPO.
Why Cursor Was Critically Important for Anthropic
Cursor, which runs on the Claude model, has become one of the largest external monetization channels for Anthropic. Every engineer using Cursor to write code was, in essence, a paying customer of Anthropic "under the hood." The flagship Composer feature, which became synonymous with "vibe coding," attracted a significant portion of Silicon Valley and engineering teams from the Fortune 500. It is Cursor and Claude that are linked to the sharp growth in Anthropic's corporate revenue in 2025.
The mechanics of the deal are also noteworthy. Musk used the SpaceX IPO as a "printing press": the company's shares went public at $135, and by the time the deal closed, they were trading above $211. This allowed him to "print" $60 billion in new shares and immediately direct them toward buying Cursor. SpaceX investors, meanwhile, faced dilution of approximately 3.4%.
A Blow to Anthropic's IPO
Analysts link this deal to preparations for Anthropic's IPO. The fact is that Cursor, as the largest corporate channel for Claude, was losing its position: its share among corporate clients dropped from 41% in June 2025 to 26% in May 2026, falling behind GitHub Copilot and Amazon Q. Investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Nvidia valued Cursor at $50 billion, considering this price aggressive. Musk, however, paid 20% more for a company that, according to experts, "is losing ground in the race."
My analysis shows: Musk went through with this deal because his own AI division, xAI, was facing serious difficulties. By the end of March 2026, all 11 co-founders had left the company, and Musk himself admitted that xAI was "built incorrectly from the start." The purchase of Cursor is not just an acquisition of technology, but a capture of a key distribution channel and a brand trusted by engineers. For Anthropic, this means the loss of one of its largest revenue sources just days before setting the IPO price.
It is important to understand: while the deal itself is confirmed, interpreting it as a planned attack on Anthropic's IPO is an analytical hypothesis. However, the facts speak for themselves. If Anthropic cannot quickly convince Wall Street that the lost revenue from Cursor can be replaced, one of the most anticipated AI IPOs this year could be under serious threat.
My expert opinion: This deal is a classic example of a "chess game" in the AI market. Musk didn't just buy a company; he cut off the oxygen supply to a key competitor at the most critical moment. For Anthropic, losing Cursor is not just a financial hole; it's a blow to reputation and investor confidence. The market will closely watch how the company can compensate for this blow ahead of its IPO. If the history of xAI teaches anything, it's that even the most ambitious projects can collapse due to flawed architecture and strategy.