SpaceX Strikes Deal With Coding Startup Cursor For $60 Billion (nytimes.com) 46
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company, said on Tuesday that it had struck a deal with the artificial intelligence start-up Cursor that could result in its acquiring the young company for $60 billion. SpaceX is making the deal just as it prepares to go public in what is likely to be one of the largest initial public offerings ever. In a social media post, SpaceX said the combination with Cursor, which makes code-writing software, would "allow us to build the world's most useful" A.I. models.
SpaceX added that the agreement gave it the option "to acquire Cursor later this year for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for our work together." It is unclear if the companies plan to consummate the deal before or after SpaceX's I.P.O., which could happen as early as June. [...] Cursor, which has raised more than $3 billion in funding, was founded in 2022 and made waves as a fast-growing A.I. start-up. It was under pressure in recent months after OpenAI and Anthropic announced competing code-writing products that were embraced by tech companies. Cursor had been in talks to raise funding in recent weeks.
SpaceX added that the agreement gave it the option "to acquire Cursor later this year for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for our work together." It is unclear if the companies plan to consummate the deal before or after SpaceX's I.P.O., which could happen as early as June. [...] Cursor, which has raised more than $3 billion in funding, was founded in 2022 and made waves as a fast-growing A.I. start-up. It was under pressure in recent months after OpenAI and Anthropic announced competing code-writing products that were embraced by tech companies. Cursor had been in talks to raise funding in recent weeks.
Why?? (Score:4, Funny)
Elon already has the bestest brain & most superduper sentient AI?
Surely Grok will attain cosmic consciousness before the end of the year, right?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Capitalism rewards the strategy of consuming your potential competition. Actual competition is only a last resort in this economic system.
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Grok sux in spite of all his efforts so Elon will just buy something that doesn't.
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Grok sux in spite of all his efforts so Elon will just buy something that doesn't.
The only reason it sucks is because Musk doesn't like the answers it gives. When Grok was asked who the largest purveyor of lies and misinformation on Twitter was, it responded with Musk [yahoo.com]. As soon as that happened Musk publicly stated he would fix that, meaning Grok.
When Grok responded to a question about violence in the U.S. and it came back with white-supremacists, Musk again stated he would correct that, meaning Grok.
Not defending the hallucinating clanker, but Grok does have its moments where it gives a
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have you actauly used cursor.
It is awful i can kinda do web based stuff.
raw HTML
but i hve been using for 6 months and it has yet to maek code tht actaully compiles.
Re:Why?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Cursor isn't an AI, it's just an IDE.
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Have you seen the price of tokens? (Score:2)
The best you can do for $60B in tokens is a half-baked mobile app.
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It's interesting how these multi-billion-dollar AI companies all have such remarkably terrible UI.
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Technically a fork of VS Code with a few plugins and modifications to use AI.
There is no IP here to buy. At best you are buying a customer base.
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I thought Cursor was just a way to make programming a subscription service.
Re: We just dumped Cursor (Score:2)
Re: We just dumped Cursor (Score:4, Interesting)
It's insane a company with a vscode clone with ai bits slapped on can get that kind of value
It's a click bait headline. This is a $10 billion option, not a $60 billion acquisition.
$10 billion is still on the insane side for a vscode extension. However, Elon has an AI platform, and that platform lacks the IDE integration that others have, so my guess is he's looking to plug that hole with money.
When you couple all that with the recent "Terafab" kickoff, it's clear Elon wants his whole AI compute stack under one roof; from the chips to the developer stack. He's building a vertically integrated AI platform.
He's doing all that because he's convinced solar powered space compute is the answer, and will make him billions. He's been right often enough that I'm not betting against it, but it's a big bet. He won't die a pauper either way, so why not?
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There are about 60 GW of AI compute data centers in the world. I saw a Youtube video where some space guy claimed to do the analysis that a starlink-sized satellite could possibly handle the thermal load for 20kW of compute. If we triple that to 60kW, that means Elon needs to build and launch 1,000,000 satellites into space. Elon had 100 launch sites sending up one rocket per hour, you would be launching continuously for over a year. Note, there are only 20-something launch sites in use worldwide. The logis
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It's the next snake oil scam to capture some of that sweet VC money.
The biggest 'data center' that has been put into space has the performance of a recent iPhone model.
The biggest hurdle is getting rid of the heat.
The near vacuum of space doesn't absorb heat very well.
It needs to be converted to infrared radiation because nothing else works.
So as long as that hasn't been solved for kW sized space data centers, it is indeed ridiculous.
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Lol. Elon's "He's been right often enough" that this guy's not betting against him. Apperently he discounts the very notably large number of times elon wasn't right. Its funny because its sad.
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Just wondering why not just build the data centers somewhere really cold? Antarctica has got to be easier than working in space.. at least you can get there without a rocket, and you can dig underground. I am not sure I understand the economic argument for space-based data centers as opposed to ground-based data centers. Space might have more solar flux than the poles but has anyone actually compared the costs?
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p.s. for people saying it is a good way to need rockets, okay. And I am definitely all for going to space. But you can also build megarobots that can shrug off Antarctica and be self-driven / self-walking. Personally they are both cool to me. And both would be useful for building a Moon base too.
Re: We just dumped Cursor (Score:1)
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They aren't bullshit concepts, but they also aren't even nearly practical now. Give it time. The Dyson sphere (practical variation) would need at least several centuries to be practical, and even then I think topopolis is a better approach, but it's not a bullshit concept. The "space AI" probably needs sustained space-based industry to become practical, and that, itself, has a few problems to overcome, but it's reasonable eventually.
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"Dyson sphere (practical variation) would need at least several centuries to be practical"
what practical variation is that?
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Elon has an AI platform, and that platform lacks the IDE integration that others have, so my guess is he's looking to plug that hole with money.
If Grok could do what he claims it could do, he could have it write the software for him and not spend anything.
Twitter (Score:2)
"Twitter isn't paying off for us the way we wanted, so let's do the same thing again but under a different name"
Time to dump Cursor (Score:3, Interesting)
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Retards out in force in /.
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Given the current government, I don't find that evidence of anything except that somebody in government doesn't like them. Perhaps evidence will show up at the trial, if they actually follow through.
Seriously?! (Score:1)
I'd write Elon a Vscode extension for
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If your plan isn't to get in early and dump the stock as close as possible to the almost inevitable price spike those all who didn't a chance to pre-buy in cheap and are now taking part in the FOMO buying / cash-out frenzy that follows the shares hitting the stock exchanges, then you *really* need to be paying attention to where all Elon's debts and loss-making business units are
Pyramid Company (Score:5, Insightful)
And now he's trying to put out to yet more investors his ultra mega unified company in an IPO, totally worth trillions of dollars because that's the new number someone managed to teach him. And in order to make it appear to have value he'll just buy yet another company! Most likely he'll buy this new company (companies?) with, an all SpaceX stock deal, which of course they should accept because after all, SpaceX is a company worth trillions of dollars!
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"Spacex....is actually worth trillions"
why and to whom? the total valuation of the global automotive industry is several trillion, likely no more than about $4T. for the pharmaceutical industry, it's about $2T total.
what exactly about this one company makes it worth as much as either - or both - of 2 of the most impactful industries of the past century?
Let's vibe code spaceX software (Score:2)
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CursorX: Sorry, Elon, I see now what I did wrong. Let me fix that for you.
Elon: The last six Starship Version 3 launches have failed disastrously.
[...]
Good for cursor (Score:2)
They are really reaching for the stars.
Go watch the Patrick Boyle YouTube video (Score:2)
I don't like where this is going. (Score:2)
Not giving any investment advice here, but I believe that Spacex is being loaded up with ailing companies and financial risk before it goes public. The Nasdaq 100 is going to be composed of around 6% of Spacex stock a few months after it starts trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange. For those with positions in QQQ this along with the 3.5% of QQQ allocated to Nvidia poses a risk.
If Spacex and Nvidia fail, you're looking at a 10% haircut not including any second order effects which might be even more significa
Everybody's becoming an AI company these days (Score:2)
Even Allbirds, the failed shoe company, is now an AI company. https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]