Deal of the Century: Musk Privatizes Cursor for $60 Billion in SpaceX Shares, Striking a Blow to Anthropic's IPO
The market for AI tools for developers is undergoing a tectonic shift. Elon Musk, using SpaceX shares as a payment method, acquired Anysphere — the creator of the popular AI coding assistant Cursor. The deal was valued at $60 billion, and notably, all transactions were completed without a single cash operation: exclusively through the issuance of SpaceX shares.
This purchase took place literally a few days before the anticipated stock market debut of Anthropic — the company developing the Claude model. And here lies the key intrigue. The fact is that Cursor was, in essence, the largest "hidden" monetization channel for Anthropic. Every engineer using Cursor to write code automatically became a paying customer of Anthropic, because the platform, in its flagship Composer feature, operated precisely on the Claude Sonnet model.
It was on the basis of this connection that the term "vibe coding" was born — an approach where a developer describes a task in plain language, and the AI writes the code. Cursor became the tool of choice for a significant portion of Silicon Valley and engineering teams from the Fortune 500 list. Anthropic's corporate revenue in 2025 skyrocketed largely because every Cursor user was a paying Anthropic customer "under the hood."
How Musk "Printed" $60 Billion for the Purchase
The mechanics of the deal are striking in their audacity. SpaceX went public on June 12 at a price of $135 per share. By the following Tuesday, the stock price had soared above $211. Using this short-term stock market frenzy, Musk effectively "printed" $60 billion in fresh capital in the form of shares and instantly spent it on a pre-agreed acquisition. SpaceX investors faced dilution of approximately 3.4% — their stake decreased due to the issuance of new shares. The IPO itself became the printing press for this purchase.
A Strategic Blow to Anthropic
Analysts link this deal to preparations for Anthropic's IPO. According to data from the service Ramp, Cursor's share among corporate clients was declining: from 41% in June 2025 to 26% in May 2026, losing ground to GitHub Copilot and Amazon Q. Investors from Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive, and Nvidia valued Cursor at $50 billion, considering this valuation aggressive. Musk paid 20% more — for a company that, according to several experts, is "losing ground in the race."
Musk's motivation is obvious: his own AI division, xAI, is experiencing 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." For SpaceX to have a compelling AI story before entering the public market, the easiest path was to buy a brand that engineers already trust — Cursor.
My analysis: This deal is not just a technology purchase, but a classic example of "ransoming" a customer base. Musk deprived Anthropic of its largest corporate sales channel for Claude right before its IPO. 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. The market is closely watching how Anthropic will extricate itself from this trap.