Elon Musk dealt a devastating blow to Anthropic ahead of its IPO: details of the $60 billion deal with Cursor
Elon Musk pulled off one of the boldest deals of the year, acquiring Anysphere, the developer of the popular AI coding tool Cursor. The deal amount was a staggering $60 billion, and notably, the payment was made exclusively with SpaceX shares. Not a single dollar in cash. This move, made literally just days before Anthropic's stock market debut, deprives the latter of one of its key revenue sources and casts doubt on the success of its IPO.
What's the gist? Cursor was, in essence, a powerful monetization channel for Anthropic's Claude models. Every engineer using Cursor to write code became a paying customer of Anthropic "under the hood." 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 precisely because of this connection that the term "vibe coding" — programming in natural language — was born. Anthropic's corporate revenue skyrocketed in 2025 largely due to this hidden stream of payments.
The Deal Mechanics: How Musk "Printed" $60 Billion
The mechanics of the transaction are striking in their elegance and aggressiveness. Musk used SpaceX's IPO as a money-printing machine. SpaceX shares went public on June 12 at $135, and by Tuesday were trading above $211. Capitalizing on the stock market frenzy, Musk issued new shares, diluting existing investors' stakes by approximately 3.4%, and immediately directed them towards the purchase of Cursor. The deal was formalized through an SEC Form 8-K, and the option to purchase was signed back in April. In effect, SpaceX's IPO became the tool for financing this acquisition.
Blow to Anthropic: Why This Is Critical
For Anthropic, losing Cursor is not just the departure of a major client. It is the loss of one of the largest external channels for using Claude. According to data from the service Ramp, Cursor's share among corporate clients declined from 41% in June 2025 to 26% in May 2026, losing ground to GitHub Copilot and Amazon Q. Nevertheless, Musk paid 20% more than the $50 billion valuation offered by Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive, and Nvidia. He bought a brand that engineers trust, and simultaneously cut off the oxygen supply to a competitor.
Musk himself has been experiencing problems with his own AI division, xAI. 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 a quick and effective way to get a compelling AI story for SpaceX ahead of its public market debut.
Expert Opinion: This deal is a classic example of "strategic cannibalism" in the era of the AI race. Musk didn't just buy an asset; he delivered a preemptive strike against a key competitor on the eve of its IPO. Now, Anthropic will have to convince Wall Street in the shortest possible time that there is something to replace the lost revenue from Cursor. If they cannot do this, one of the most anticipated AI IPOs of the year could be at risk of failure. The market is closely watching how Anthropic will respond to this challenge.