At a critical moment as SpaceX prepares for its historic initial public offering (IPO), the aerospace giant under Elon Musk announced on Tuesday evening a highly shocking capital plan: SpaceX has secured the right to acquire the automated programming platform Cursor for $60 billion later this year. If the acquisition is not ultimately triggered, SpaceX will pay up to $10 billion in fees for in-depth collaboration between the two companies in the field of artificial intelligence.

SpaceX Rocket Space

This unconventional "either-or" agreement highlights Musk's urgent need to bridge the AI coding gap. By combining Cursor's leading intelligent coding products with SpaceX's million-level H100 equivalent "Colossus" supercomputer, SpaceX aims to build a top-tier knowledge work model globally to face fierce competition from Anthropic and OpenAI. Previously, Musk had completed the merger of xAI and SpaceX in February of this year, and the combined entity now has an internal valuation of $1.25 trillion, preparing to go public with a target valuation of $1.75 trillion in June.

Industry background shows that the AI programming sector has become a red zone for major players' battles. Just before SpaceX's official announcement, it was reported that Cursor was undergoing a $2 billion funding round at a valuation of $50 million. At the same time, competitors are making frequent moves: Google co-founder Sergey Brin has led a "special forces" team to accelerate the development of self-built AI agents, while Sam Altman of OpenAI is reportedly shifting resources from Sora to ensure the leadership of ChatGPT super-applications and Codex tools.