I'm skeptical of this deal. Cursor led the way on agentic coding, but Claude Code and Codex have replaced it. [I use Codex for everything now.]
Still, I'm hearing that Grok 4.6 is almost as good at coding as Codex, but lots cheaper. [My network is also down on Claude--Opus 5 seems like a regression.]
The optimistic scenario would be Grok being a fast-follower with cheaper rates, and staying ahead of open source models. If they can pull that off, and convince enough developers, then maybe they've got a chance.
But $60B seems insane to me. What's Cursor's market share relative to Codex and Claude Code? If it's not meaningful, then it's $60B for an acquihire.
I'm hoping Cursor becomes the third biggest (American) AI model company, replacing Google. Elon works best with top talent, and I think Cursor most kept its team together; were there any big departure from there recently?
I mean I get that we can all dislike this move but it might the best way to get into the race to become one of the top labs. Ofc Grok 4.6 is not there yet, I have seen people claim it's quite good and it is but it's a marginal improvement over the mid tier models from the top 2.
And it's certainly worse than the recent GLM 5.3 (especially once we get the weights for it).
Conversely, I'm hoping all Elon's companies go bankrupt. Elon works best with top talent because he is nothing but a grifter good at taking credit for the hard work of others (see: Tesla), and failing upwards.
Concentrating so much wealth in one unstable individual like Elon is objectively bad for society.
Keep in mind while this is the date they officially became part of SpaceX, they have already been collaborating on building models together. So don't expect a significant bump in performance on new Grok models due to the additional data from Cursor--that bump already happened with Grok 4.5[1] and now 4.6.
I get it and yet I don't. On one hand, my experience with Cursor (albeit limited) tells me that it's a perfect fit with Elon's other ventures. Then again, I don't see how there's anything so special about it that SpaceXAI would want to acquire it for either the software itself or the talent behind it. It seems more likely that acquiring Cursor is a way to get more users for Grok, seeing as how it still has a very small share of the market.
I've never seen the appeal of cursor either, but then I'm a decades-long vim (now neovim) guy and don't use IDEs in general. But for me claude/codex TUIs are a great way to fit agents into my workflow.
My suspicion is that it's a way to break into more developer workflows for Grok, even if the market share is relatively small. I've never used grok and don't plan to at this point, but I have highly respected friends who say it is pretty damn good, and some of them even started using Cursor because of this pairing, so anecdatally at least it does seem to be working.
So they can play the game that the other big AI companies are playing, where they invest in one another to make each one look bigger on the books, even though it's all the same money, likely.
The data is special. Data of programmers using coding agents in the real world is invaluable for AI training. And their customer base is useful to deploy new models into.
Why not just use VS Code which cursor (and antigravity and the one Amazon is pushing) is a fork of? It will be much closer in functionality and has been loaded up with agent features nonstop for the last 18 months.
I'm skeptical of this deal. Cursor led the way on agentic coding, but Claude Code and Codex have replaced it. [I use Codex for everything now.]
Still, I'm hearing that Grok 4.6 is almost as good at coding as Codex, but lots cheaper. [My network is also down on Claude--Opus 5 seems like a regression.]
The optimistic scenario would be Grok being a fast-follower with cheaper rates, and staying ahead of open source models. If they can pull that off, and convince enough developers, then maybe they've got a chance.
But $60B seems insane to me. What's Cursor's market share relative to Codex and Claude Code? If it's not meaningful, then it's $60B for an acquihire.
I'm hoping Cursor becomes the third biggest (American) AI model company, replacing Google. Elon works best with top talent, and I think Cursor most kept its team together; were there any big departure from there recently?
What proprietary models does Cursor offer? Do they have any of the infrastructure to develop, train, and refine a frontier model?
Now they do have SpaceX's GPUs and Grok models...
I mean I get that we can all dislike this move but it might the best way to get into the race to become one of the top labs. Ofc Grok 4.6 is not there yet, I have seen people claim it's quite good and it is but it's a marginal improvement over the mid tier models from the top 2.
And it's certainly worse than the recent GLM 5.3 (especially once we get the weights for it).
Conversely, I'm hoping all Elon's companies go bankrupt. Elon works best with top talent because he is nothing but a grifter good at taking credit for the hard work of others (see: Tesla), and failing upwards.
Concentrating so much wealth in one unstable individual like Elon is objectively bad for society.
Elon is still all in on replacing programmers. He listens to always the same stupid booster accounts (XFreeze etc.).
Good that there is now an administration that creates jobs, does not engage in foreign wars and has ended the Ukraine war in 24 hours.
Cooool, won't be using that again
Keep in mind while this is the date they officially became part of SpaceX, they have already been collaborating on building models together. So don't expect a significant bump in performance on new Grok models due to the additional data from Cursor--that bump already happened with Grok 4.5[1] and now 4.6.
[1] https://cursor.com/blog/grok-4-5
Isn't it SpaceXAI now? I lost track.
X, the everything app, formerly known as Twitter, now SpaceXAI XCursor X.
AI by xAI, a SpaceX subsidiary fka as Twitter, special collab with Cursor
That's like a popular 2000's era username.
xXxSpaceXAixX
xXxSpaceXAIxX: Return of Xander Cage
Musk pulls a Howard Hughes and goes into Hollywood producing just to bring back that franchise, just just for the letter X.
Very on-brand for a Halo 2 lobby circa 2005.
Don't give him any ideas.
SpaceX, the everything company
SpaceXtra
How long until he names a company "E" just so he can giggle about the name?
Subscription is gone the second I feel like their not running the inference at a loss
Hopefully they can unify the harnesses now. Weird how there's both grok build and cursor-agent at the same time.
Previously in June:
SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48553224
I get it and yet I don't. On one hand, my experience with Cursor (albeit limited) tells me that it's a perfect fit with Elon's other ventures. Then again, I don't see how there's anything so special about it that SpaceXAI would want to acquire it for either the software itself or the talent behind it. It seems more likely that acquiring Cursor is a way to get more users for Grok, seeing as how it still has a very small share of the market.
I've never seen the appeal of cursor either, but then I'm a decades-long vim (now neovim) guy and don't use IDEs in general. But for me claude/codex TUIs are a great way to fit agents into my workflow.
My suspicion is that it's a way to break into more developer workflows for Grok, even if the market share is relatively small. I've never used grok and don't plan to at this point, but I have highly respected friends who say it is pretty damn good, and some of them even started using Cursor because of this pairing, so anecdatally at least it does seem to be working.
So they can play the game that the other big AI companies are playing, where they invest in one another to make each one look bigger on the books, even though it's all the same money, likely.
The data is special. Data of programmers using coding agents in the real world is invaluable for AI training. And their customer base is useful to deploy new models into.
Congrats to everyone at Cursor!
They were not joking
Shame.
Why? The product isn't likely to change
But the people collecting the money have.
...and I won't be revisiting Cursor again.
Why not? The product isn't likely to change
Some people perhaps just don’t want to give money to literal Bond villains. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
…and the world kept spinning
Eeeewww. Grok. Off to look at Zed.
Zed's very handy, I find, and i'm not saying so because i'm driven to it by aversion to alternatives: it's just very useful.
Why not just use VS Code which cursor (and antigravity and the one Amazon is pushing) is a fork of? It will be much closer in functionality and has been loaded up with agent features nonstop for the last 18 months.
...to the moon?
Think the aim is Mars.
Earlier this year they literally publicized changing their immediate goal from Mars to the Moon.
Perfect tool for rocket control systems and in general control and life support systems of Mars colonies.
Vibe codin' away the colonization of Mars
It’s been enshittified to the Moon now
I swear I actually laughed out loud with this, is this a joke?
Companies buy other companies all the time, so I'm not sure why anyone is surprised.
No.