{"id":746803,"date":"2026-06-19T14:01:32","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T14:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/746803\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T14:01:32","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T14:01:32","slug":"spacex-acquires-anthropic-and-openai-rival-in-60b-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/746803\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX acquires Anthropic and OpenAI rival in $60B deal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Elon Musk<\/a> just made his biggest bet yet on artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

Days after SpaceX<\/a>‘s record-breaking stock market debut, the company confirmed it would acquire Anysphere, the San Francisco-based startup behind the popular AI<\/a> coding tool Cursor, in a deal valued at $60 billion.<\/p>\n

The move puts SpaceX (SPCX) in direct competition with Anthropic and OpenAI in one of the hottest corners of tech right now: AI-powered coding tools.<\/p>\n

What is Cursor, and why does it matter so much? <\/p>\n

Cursor launched in 2023 and helps software developers write, fix, and automate code faster using artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

The platform lets users toggle between AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Google, and others.<\/p>\n

The tool became one of the fastest-growing startups in Silicon Valley history, according to Bloomberg<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It now has more than one million users and already pulls in billions in annualized revenue, the Wall Street Journal<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n

That user base is what makes it so attractive. In an interview with The Guardian, PitchBook analyst Harrison Rolfes<\/a> put it plainly:<\/p>\n

“Owning the tool that professional developers already trust daily is a faster path to enterprise AI revenue than winning the model race.”<\/p>\n

Related: Franklin Templeton CEO sends strong message on SpaceX<\/a><\/p>\n

Cursor competed with Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex, but without SpaceX’s computing resources, its growth hit a ceiling.<\/p>\n

Access to SpaceX’s Colossus supercomputer in Memphis, Tenn., which houses around one million H100-equivalent chips, changes that equation entirely.<\/p>\n

SpaceX is playing catch-up\u00a0 <\/p>\n

SpaceX’s AI division, xAI, has openly lagged behind rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI on coding capabilities.<\/p>\n

Musk has admitted the gap is real. The company has been quietly poaching engineers from Cursor for months, Bloomberg<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n

SpaceX teams and Cursor employees were already collaborating on coding and compute as recently as May.<\/p>\n

The formal acquisition closes the loop.<\/p>\n

In an interview with The Guardian, Gil Luria<\/a>, head of technology research at DA Davidson, said the deal will “improve SpaceX’s position in the frontier model race with Anthropic and OpenAI.”<\/p>\n

He added that Grok, xAI’s chatbot, “has to have a coding component that enterprise customers can utilize side by side with Anthropic Claude Code and OpenAI Codex.”<\/p>\n

Right now, enterprise clients have largely avoided Grok. Cursor’s brand credibility with professional developers gives SpaceX a much faster path to those lucrative corporate contracts.<\/p>\n

\"SpaceX SpaceX widens its AI moatSpencer Platt&sol;Getty Images The SpaceX-Cursor deal term <\/p>\n

Anysphere investors will receive $60 billion worth of SpaceX stock, as per a regulatory filing.<\/p>\n

The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026. Crucially, the deal will not use proceeds from SpaceX’s IPO<\/a>.<\/p>\n

SpaceX originally locked in the option to acquire Cursor back in April, according to The Guardian<\/a>, paying to either buy it outright for $60 billion or pursue a $10 billion partnership.<\/p>\n

The timing of the formal announcement is no coincidence.<\/p>\n

SpaceX’s stock surged roughly 50% in its first few trading sessions after its IPO, pushing its market valuation past Amazon’s to make it the world’s fifth-most-valuable publicly traded company, according to Bloomberg<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More SpaceX: <\/p>\n

As hedge fund<\/a> billionaire Bill Ackman<\/a> noted on X: “The Cursor acquisition costs materially less in dilution because of SpaceX’s high valuation.”<\/p>\n

Ackman added, “SpaceX\u2019s ability to do economically, strategically, and technologically accretive acquisitions is an important component of its value. There is enormous value inherent to a company with a high value particularly when it is controlled by an entrepreneur that the most talented people want to work for and partner with.”<\/p>\n

In other words, a higher stock price means SpaceX issues fewer shares to fund the deal, a key advantage.<\/p>\n

SpaceX posted<\/a> revenues of $18.7 billion in 2025, though it also recorded a net loss of $4.9 billion as it absorbed xAI’s debt.<\/p>\n

The Cursor deal signals that SpaceX is doubling down on its AI ambitions.<\/p>\n

Related: Oppenheimer issues bold SpaceX stock price target<\/a><\/p>\n

This story was originally published by TheStreet<\/a> on Jun 17, 2026, where it first appeared in the Investing<\/a> section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk just made his biggest bet yet on artificial intelligence. Days after SpaceX‘s record-breaking stock market debut,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":746804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,2729,254,255,64,63,359088,5437,105],"class_list":["post-746803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-anthropic","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-professional-developers","tag-spacex","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=746803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/746804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}