OpenAI to Cut Off Cursor After SpaceX Acquires Service for $60B

OpenAI has announced it is terminating its partnership with the popular AI code editor Cursor after the service came under the control of Elon Musk’s aerospace corporation SpaceX. Existing GPT models will be disabled on November 12, 2026, and future releases from the developer, including the flagship model Astra, will not be added to the service.

Change-of-control clause and OpenAI’s stance

In an official statement, OpenAI said it invoked the contract’s change of control clause. The two companies had worked together for nearly four years, and OpenAI says it has no complaints about Cursor’s development team.

The main reason for the split is the risk that Elon Musk’s companies might violate the Terms of Service. OpenAI pointed to long-running legal and ethical disputes with Musk’s xAI and X, stressing the need for strict security guarantees when sharing advanced technology with direct competitors. The cutoff is set for the latest date allowed by the contract to give users time to adapt.

The $60B mega-deal and Colossus computing power

SpaceX completed its acquisition of Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, in mid-August. According to SEC filings, the deal was worth about $60 billion, paid in SpaceX stock.

As Cursor’s blog notes, the sale gave developers direct access to the massive computing power of the SpaceXAI Colossus supercluster, which is now training its own family of code completion models called Composer.

Negotiations, Musk’s criticism, and Claude’s rise

Key market players quickly reacted to the breakup:

• Attempt at dialogue: Cursor co-founder Michael Truell told Reuters that the project is continuing quiet negotiations with OpenAI, hoping to reach a compromise before the November 12 deadline;
• Musk’s reaction: the SpaceX CEO publicly criticized OpenAI’s leadership, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, saying that the departure of GPT models will not affect the product’s future;
• Anthropic’s move: OpenAI’s main competitor has already announced it is allocating additional server capacity to ensure the smooth operation of its Claude models within the editor.

What this means for programmers

For most developers, losing OpenAI won’t be fatal: Cursor was designed as a multi-model environment from the start. In addition to the GPT family, the editor supports Claude from Anthropic, Gemini from Google, Grok from xAI, and specialized models developed in-house. However, native access to the OpenAI ecosystem will be completely shut off after November 12.