Deal of the Century: Musk Buys Cursor for $60 Billion in SpaceX Stock — a Blow to Anthropic's IPO
Elon Musk has pulled off perhaps one of the boldest deals of the year. Just days before the anticipated Anthropic IPO, he acquired Anysphere, the developer of the popular AI coding tool Cursor. The deal is worth $60 billion, with not a single dollar in cash: it's all paid for with SpaceX shares.
Cursor is not just another startup. It is one of the largest external monetization channels for Anthropic's Claude model. Every engineer using Cursor is, in essence, a paying customer of Anthropic "under the hood." The flagship Composer feature, powered by Claude Sonnet, has become a genuine hit in Silicon Valley, even spawning the term "vibe coding" — where a programmer describes a task in words, and the AI writes the code.
According to data from the analytics service Ramp, Cursor's share among corporate clients has been declining: from 41% in June 2025 to 26% in May 2026, losing ground to GitHub Copilot and Amazon Q. Investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive, and Nvidia, valued Cursor at $50 billion — and considered that figure aggressive. Musk paid 20% more for a company that, according to some experts, is losing its lead in the race.
Why is this a blow to the Anthropic IPO?
The logic is harsh. First, SpaceX goes public to obtain "currency" — expensive shares. Then Musk uses them to buy Cursor, which was the largest corporate sales channel for Claude. And all of this happens in the window between Anthropic filing for its IPO and setting the offering price.
It's important to understand: interpreting this deal as a planned attack on the Anthropic IPO is an analytical hypothesis, not an established fact. However, the coincidence looks too systematic. 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 at risk.
Expert opinion: Musk is clearly playing the long game. Buying Cursor is not just about eliminating a competitor for xAI, but a strategic capture of the user base and distribution channel. For Anthropic, losing such a client is a serious blow to revenue and investor confidence at the most critical moment. The market will be watching closely to see how the company explains this gap in its financial model.