SpaceX strikes €51bn deal for AI coding firm as valuation rockets after IPO

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has struck a deal to buy AI coding agent Cursor for 60 billion US dollars (€51.7 billion) as its valuation continues to rocket days after a record-breaking stock market debut.

Shares in SpaceX have been soaring since Friday’s initial public offering (IPO) and news of the acquisition helped fuel a fresh uplift.

The deal will see Musk’s spaceflight and technology business take over Anysphere, the San Francisco-based company behind the coding platform.

It comes with a hefty price tag which is based on Cursor’s stock valuation.

SpaceX said in April that it had started working with Cursor to jointly train an AI model, and that it had been given the right to acquire the firm.

Cursor works by using AI technology to automate parts of the process of writing code and support software development.

The formal agreement of the takeover comes days after SpaceX’s IPO on the Nasdaq index in New York.

The record-breaking IPO valued the company at two trillion US dollars (€1.7 trillion) on the first day of trading.

It made Tesla and X owner Musk – already a billionaire – the world’s first paper trillionaire and cemented his position as the richest man on the planet.

SpaceX shares have been rising since and are currently trading at more than 210 dollars per share – up from the 150 dollar opening price on Friday.

Its market capitalisation surpassed 2.8 trillion US dollars on Tuesday afternoon, overtaking Amazon’s 2.67 trillion.

The company said in its IPO prospectus that the biggest potential market was the sale of business-oriented AI products, an ambition which is set to be helped by the Cursor acquisition.