Musk delivered a strategic blow to Anthropic: acquiring Cursor for $60 billion and undermining the IPO
Elon Musk has executed one of the most high-profile deals in the AI sector, acquiring Anysphere — the developer of the popular code-writing tool Cursor — for $60 billion. The payment was made in SpaceX shares, and the entire transaction was completed just days before the anticipated Anthropic IPO. This is not merely a purchase, but a calculated maneuver that directly targets one of Anthropic's key revenue streams.
The crux of the matter is that Cursor operated on Anthropic's Claude model. Every engineer using the platform was, in essence, a paying customer of Anthropic "under the hood." This tool became indispensable for a significant portion of Silicon Valley and many engineering teams from the Fortune 500. Its flagship feature, Composer, based on Claude Sonnet, became one of the most beloved AI products for programmers. It was with Cursor and Claude that the term "vibe coding" emerged — an approach where a developer describes a task in words, and the AI writes the code.
Financial Mechanism and Blow to Anthropic
The deal is unique not only in its scale but also in its payment method. Not a single dollar in cash changed hands: all $60 billion was paid in SpaceX shares. Musk leveraged several days of stock market frenzy following SpaceX's public listing to "print" $60 billion in fresh capital in the form of shares and immediately spend them on the pre-agreed purchase. SpaceX investors, meanwhile, faced dilution of approximately 3.4%.
Anthropic's corporate revenue surged in 2025, with a significant portion of this growth driven precisely by Cursor. Now that Musk has cut off this channel, Anthropic faces a critical question: can the company convince Wall Street that the lost revenue can be replaced? If not, one of the most anticipated AI IPOs this year could be at risk.
Musk's Motives: xAI's Weakness and Strategic Necessity
Why did Musk pursue such an aggressive deal, paying 20% more than the $50 billion valuation that even giants like Andreessen Horowitz and Nvidia considered aggressive? The answer lies in the problems of his own AI division, xAI. 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." For SpaceX to have a compelling AI story ahead of its public market debut, the simplest path was to buy a brand that engineers already trust.
Expert Opinion from Cryptalist: This deal is a vivid example of how, in the world of high technology and cryptocurrencies (through the lens of capitalization and strategic maneuvers), a single move can reshape the landscape of an entire industry. Musk didn't just buy a company — he bought an audience and a sales channel, depriving his main competitor of its key asset right before the most important moment in its history. Now the market will be closely watching how Anthropic extricates itself from this situation.