Musk's $60 Billion Deal: How the Cursor Acquisition Hit Anthropic's IPO
Elon Musk pulled off one of the boldest deals of the year: acquiring Anysphere, the developer of the popular AI coding tool Cursor, for $60 billion. The payment was made in SpaceX shares — not a single dollar in cash. The deal was closed literally just days before Anthropic, Cursor's key partner, filed for an initial public offering (IPO). This is not just an acquisition, but a strategic strike that could significantly alter the balance of power in the artificial intelligence market.
Why was Cursor so important to Anthropic?
Cursor is not just another AI assistant. Its flagship feature, Composer, powered by Anthropic's Claude model, became a genuine hit among developers. The term "vibe coding," where a programmer describes a task in words and the AI writes the code, was born precisely from this combination. Essentially, every engineer using Cursor was a hidden paying customer of Anthropic. Cursor became one of the largest external monetization channels for Claude, attracting a significant portion of Silicon Valley and engineering teams from the Fortune 500 list.
Anthropic's corporate revenue surged in 2025 largely due to this partnership. Losing such a channel is a serious blow to the company's income, especially on the eve of its stock market debut.
The mechanics of the deal: How Musk "printed" $60 billion
The most interesting part of this story is the payment method. Musk used the SpaceX IPO as a "printing press." SpaceX shares went public on June 12 at a price of $135, and by the following Tuesday, they were trading above $211. Using a few days of stock market frenzy, Musk effectively "printed" $60 billion in the form of new SpaceX shares and immediately spent them on purchasing Cursor. SpaceX investors, meanwhile, faced dilution of approximately 3.4% — their stake decreased due to the issuance of new shares. The IPO became the perfect tool for financing this aggressive acquisition.
Connection to the Anthropic IPO: Coincidence or planned attack?
The timing coincidence looks more than suspicious. Cursor's share among corporate clients, according to data from the service Ramp, declined from 41% in June 2025 to 26% in May 2026, losing ground to GitHub Copilot and Amazon Q. Despite this, investors valued Cursor at $50 billion, and Musk paid 20% more — for a company that, in the opinion of many, is already losing its leadership.
Analysts link this move to the problems of Musk's 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 before entering the public market, the easiest path was to buy a brand that engineers already trust.
My analysis: This deal is a masterclass in corporate strategy in the AI era. Musk didn't just buy technology; he cut off a key sales channel for Anthropic at the most critical moment. For Anthropic, this is an existential challenge: can the company quickly convince Wall Street that the lost revenue from Cursor can be replaced? If not, one of the most anticipated IPOs in the AI field this year could be under serious threat.