Artificial Intelligence · Profile from AI Research Companion
Anysphere (Cursor)
The San Francisco start-up, founded in 2022 by four MIT students, whose AI code editor Cursor, a fork of Microsoft's open-source VS Code with AI built into every part of the editing loop, became the fastest-growing software product of the generative-AI era by its own and investors' accounts. Annualised revenue went from ~$100m (January 2025) to ~$1bn (November 2025) and ~$2bn (February 2026), then a reported ~$3bn (May 2026). All are company or press-reported run rates, not audited figures. Its valuation rose from ~$400m (2024) to $29.3bn (November 2025). For most of its life Cursor resold other companies' models, chiefly Anthropic's Claude, and reports said it ran at a negative gross margin. That dependence drove its later moves: an in-house model line (Composer, from October 2025), a disputed Composer 2 built on Moonshot AI's open Kimi K2.5 (March 2026), and a sale. SpaceX, which by then owned xAI, took an option in April 2026, agreed to buy Cursor in an all-stock deal valued at ~$60bn on 16 June 2026, and closed it on 14 August 2026 (reported). Cursor now operates inside the SpaceXAI group.
At a glance
- Founded
- 2022, by Michael Truell (CEO), Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark and Aman Sanger, then MIT students; Cursor editor released 2023
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California
- Ownership / structure
- Private until August 2026. Investors included the OpenAI Startup Fund (seed), Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, Benchmark, Accel, Coatue, Google and Nvidia (reported). Wholly owned subsidiary of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX, Nasdaq: SPCX) from 14 August 2026; part of the SpaceXAI group (reported)
- Leadership (2026)
- Michael Truell (co-founder and CEO; verify title inside SpaceX); Aman Sanger and Sualeh Asif (co-founders); Arvid Lunnemark left in October 2025 to found a safety-focused research lab (reported); Lee Robinson (developer education; formerly Vercel, reported); Travis McPeak (security, from 2025, reported)
- AI products
- Cursor editor (Tab completion, chat, Agent mode); Bugbot code review (2025); background, web, mobile and cloud agents (2025); Cursor Agent CLI (August 2025); Cursor 2.0 with the Composer model (October 2025); Composer 2 (March 2026); Composer 2.5 and xAI's Grok models in the model picker (2026, reported)
- Scale
- ARR ~$100m (January 2025); >$500m (June 2025); >$1bn (November 2025); ~$2bn (February 2026, Bloomberg); ~$3bn (May 2026, Bloomberg); ~$4bn (early June 2026, Forbes/Dealroom, reported), of which ~$2.6bn from enterprise/B2B customers (Reuters, company data) — the two figures measure different scopes, not a conflict (re-checked Nov 2026); all company or press-reported run rates. ~300 employees (August 2025, reported)
- Capital raised
- ~$8m seed led by the OpenAI Startup Fund (October 2023); $60m Series A at ~$400m (2024); ~$105m Series B at ~$2.5bn (December 2024/January 2025, reported); $900m Series C at $9.9bn post-money led by Thrive (June 2025); $2.3bn Series D at $29.3bn co-led by Accel and Coatue (13 November 2025); talks for ≥$2bn at ~$50bn pre-money (April 2026, reported, overtaken by the SpaceX deal). About $3.4bn of disclosed funding in all (reported)
- Exit
- SpaceX option (21 April 2026: buy for $60bn later in 2026 or pay $10bn for joint work); exercised 16 June 2026, all-stock, ~$60bn; closed 14 August 2026, with Anysphere shares converted into SpaceX Class A shares on a seven-day average price; a ~389.3m share count appears only on Wikipedia and implies ~$154 a share, plausible for a seven-day average in the week after the 12 June listing (above the $135 IPO price, below the ~$211 peak) but sourced only to Wikipedia, so treat it as unconfirmed (verify)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- The VS Code fork founding (2022); the Series A and Supermaven (2024); the "Sam" support-bot hallucination (2025); the $9.9bn Series C and revenue ramp (2025); the Pro-plan pricing change and refunds (2025); Cursor 2.0 and the Composer model (2025); the $29.3bn Series D and Graphite (2025); Composer 2 and the Kimi disclosure (2026); the SpaceX option and ~$60bn acquisition (2026)
9 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2022
Founding and the VS Code Fork
Founding / launch
2024
Series A and the Supermaven Acquisition
Funding round / acquisition
2025
29bn Series D and the Graphite Acquisition
Funding round / acquisition
2025
900m Series C and the Revenue Ramp
Funding round
2025
Cursor 2 and the Composer Model
Model release / product launch
2025
Pro Plan Pricing Change and Refunds
Pricing change (failure)
2025
Sam Support Bot Hallucination
Incident (failure) / customer-support automation
2026
Composer 2 and the Kimi Disclosure
Model release (controversy)
2026
SpaceX Option and 60bn Acquisition
Acquisition (as target) / compute partnership