Quick Facts
- SpaceX agreed to acquire Anysphere, parent of AI coding tool Cursor, for $60 billion in an all-stock deal — the largest startup acquisition ever recorded.
- US acquirers have spent at least $119.8 billion buying venture-backed startups in 2026, putting the year on pace to surpass 2025’s record total.
- Cursor reached $4 billion in annualized revenue in under four years, with enterprise customers generating roughly $2.6 billion of that figure.
SpaceX has formally moved to acquire Anysphere, the San Francisco-based company behind the AI coding editor Cursor, for $60 billion in an all-stock transaction. The deal, announced June 16, 2026, is the largest acquisition of a venture-backed startup in recorded history — nearly double Google’s $32 billion purchase of Wiz, the previous frontrunner.
The price tag represents approximately 15 times Cursor’s annualized revenue, one of the highest multiples ever paid for an AI software company. SpaceX is paying with shares priced at the volume-weighted average closing price over the seven trading days before the deal closes. The transaction is expected to close in Q3 2026, pending regulatory approval.
The merger agreement includes a $10 billion general termination fee payable by SpaceX if the deal falls apart, plus a separate $4 billion fee if regulators block it on antitrust grounds. Should SpaceX have chosen not to exercise its option at all, it would have owed Anysphere $1.5 billion in breakup fees and $8.5 billion in computing resources.
The Revenue Machine Behind the Deal
Anysphere was founded in 2022 by four MIT graduates: Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark, and Aman Sanger. The company built an AI-native integrated development environment that reached $1 billion in annualized revenue within 24 months of launch.
By early June 2026, that figure had climbed to $4 billion — up from $2 billion in February and $3 billion in late April. Cursor’s tools are used by 67% of the Fortune 500 and generate 150 million lines of enterprise code per day. Its enterprise segment tripled in the first quarter of 2026 alone.
Anysphere raised $3.4 billion from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, Accel, and Coatue. Its last formal valuation stood at $29.3 billion in November 2025. SpaceX is acquiring the company at roughly double that valuation.
SpaceX’s IPO Created the Currency
SpaceX went public on June 12, 2026, raising $75 billion in the largest IPO in Wall Street history. Shares opened at $150 on the Nasdaq, an 11% premium over the $135 IPO price, and the company reached a market capitalization of approximately $2.1 trillion on its first trading day.
Four days after the IPO, SpaceX shares closed at $192.46 on the day the Cursor deal was announced. The stock jumped roughly 16% following the news, pushing the company’s total market value past $2.7 trillion.
The deal gives SpaceX a direct position in enterprise software at a moment when AI-assisted coding has led large companies to reduce their reliance on human engineers. Cursor becomes a wholly owned SpaceX subsidiary once the transaction closes.
A Record Year for Startup M&A
The Cursor acquisition accounts for roughly half of the $119.8 billion that acquirers have spent on private, venture-backed US companies in 2026 so far. That total puts the year on pace to surpass 2025’s record-setting M&A tally.
For comparison, the next two largest startup acquisitions on record were Facebook’s $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp in 2014 and Google’s Wiz deal. The SpaceX-Anysphere transaction sits well above both.
Cursor’s rapid growth — driven in part by its recently introduced Cloud Agents product, which autonomously handles complex programming tasks in the background — made it a compelling target. For founders and executives watching the deal market, the transaction signals that AI coding infrastructure has become a strategic asset large enough to move at a scale once reserved for mature enterprise software players.
Read more: Cursor Deal Puts US On Track For Record Startup M&A Year