When SpaceX announced had agreed to acquire popular AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion last month, investors believed the deal would be a boon for both companies. Cursor would benefit from obtaining the computing resources of a major AI lab, which it could use to train its own models. In turn, SpaceX and Elon Musk would own one of the most popular AI development tools on the market.

What was less clear was whether Cursor could remain an open platform after the deal, or whether rival AI labs would continue to allow it to offer its models. Historically, third-party AI models have played a critical role in Cursor’s business. While the company has begun training its own AI models in recent years, it has always allowed users to choose from a variety of offerings from Anthropic, OpenAI, and other AI labs to power its coding assistant.

That strategy allowed Cursor to offer customers the best or cheapest model at any given time. It also benefited Anthropic and OpenAI, which count Cursor among their largest clients and highlight the startup in their marketing materials.

After the SpaceX acquisition closes later this year, Cursor hopes to continue operating its AI coding product as a platform, serving models from Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI labs alongside its own, according to people close to Cursor.

I have my doubts about how this will actually play out, but whether Cursor remains model-agnostic is one of the biggest questions hanging over the AI ​​industry.

Eno Reyes, co-founder and CTO of Factory, a smaller AI coding startup that competes with Cursor, says he’s not sure SpaceX’s rivals will automatically kill off Cursor just because it will be owned by a competing AI lab. “I don’t know if the decision is black or white,” Reyes tells me. “Actually, it’s not very clear to us.”

Cursor declined to comment for this story. Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.

make enemies

This is not the first time Cursor’s relationship with OpenAI and Anthropic has been tested. Historically, Cursor complemented AI labs by distributing its models through its coding platform. But now it has increasingly found itself in direct competition with them, as OpenAI’s Codex and Anthropic’s Claude Code have become important lines of their respective businesses. The acquisition of SpaceX will likely only intensify that rivalry.

SpaceX and Cursor can’t say much about how they will operate after the acquisition, in part because the deal has not yet closed and remains subject to “required regulatory approvals,” according to documents SpaceX filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. But SpaceX is prepared to keep Cursor’s assets, customer contracts and intellectual property, meaning OpenAI and Anthropic will now have to do business with Musk if they want to reach Cursor users.

Once the acquisition is complete, SpaceX may decide it does not want to send business to Anthropic and OpenAI, two of its biggest competitors in the frontier AI development space. Anthropic and OpenAI may determine that they are unwilling to sell their AI models through a product owned by Musk, with whom both companies’ CEOs, Dario Amodei and Sam Altman, have clashed in the past.

Historically, AI labs have not played well when it comes to selling AI models to each other. Last year, Anthropic was quick to cut off access to Windsurf after it emerged that OpenAI was acquiring the AI ​​coding startup (the deal ultimately didn’t work out). Anthropic co-founder Jared Kaplan said at the time that “it would be strange to sell Claude to OpenAI.” In the months since, Anthropic has worked to limit OpenAI and SpaceX’s use of its Claude AI models.