Elon Musk intercepted a key Anthropic client ahead of its IPO: a strategic breakdown of the $60 billion Cursor acquisition
A tectonic shift has occurred in the world of artificial intelligence that could radically alter the balance of power ahead of one of the most anticipated IPOs of the year. This concerns Elon Musk's acquisition of Anysphere, the developer of the popular AI tool for programmers, Cursor. The deal amount was $60 billion, and notably, the payment was made exclusively with SpaceX shares. Not a single dollar of cash was involved in this transaction.
For a long time, Cursor was not just an ordinary application but one of the largest external monetization channels for Anthropic, the developer of the Claude model. Every engineer using Cursor to write code was, in essence, a paying customer of Anthropic "under the hood." It was the Claude Sonnet model that powered the flagship Composer feature, which gave rise to the term "vibe coding" — an approach where a developer describes a task in natural language, and the AI writes the code. Anthropic's corporate revenue in 2025 grew sharply largely due to this symbiosis.
Musk executed this operation with surgical precision. First, SpaceX went public on June 12 at a price of $135 per share, and by Tuesday, the quotes had soared above $211. Capitalizing on this frenzy, Musk "printed" $60 billion in the form of new shares and instantly directed them toward a pre-agreed purchase. SpaceX investors faced dilution of approximately 3.4% — their stake decreased due to the issuance, but the deal itself became a demonstration of unique financial engineering.
Why does this hit Anthropic? Because Cursor, which is losing market share (from 41% in June 2025 to 26% in May 2026, falling behind GitHub Copilot and Amazon Q), still remained a critical link in Anthropic's revenue chain. Investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Nvidia valued Cursor at $50 billion, but Musk paid 20% more — for a company that, according to some analysts, "is losing ground in the race." The deal was closed in the interval between Anthropic filing for its IPO and setting the offering price.
My analysis: This is not just a purchase, but a classic strategic interception. Musk, whose own AI division xAI faced serious problems (all 11 co-founders left the company by the end of March 2026), acquired a ready-made brand trusted by engineers worldwide. For Anthropic, the loss of such a sales channel is a serious blow to its narrative ahead of the IPO. If the company cannot quickly convince Wall Street that it has an equivalent replacement for the lost revenue from Cursor, one of the most high-profile offerings of the year could be at risk. In this game of chess, Musk played a blitz match, and his move proved unexpected and deadly for the competitor.