OpenAI Cut Off a Billion-Dollar Customer to Avoid Elon Musk
wired ·
OpenAI announced it is winding down its partnership with Cursor after Elon Musk's SpaceX acquired the AI coding startup in a $60 billion deal, citing an inability to trust Musk's companies to honor contracts. The move means OpenAI walked away from a customer that was projected to generate over $1 billion in annualized revenue and ranked among its top five customers in early 2026. The decision comes as OpenAI prepares for an initial public offering and seeks to present a stable, diversified business to investors. Cursor's CEO downplayed the impact by claiming OpenAI models serve only about 5% of Cursor user traffic, but OpenAI countered that token usage does not reflect revenue or value created. The two companies share a long history, as OpenAI's startup fund invested in Cursor early and OpenAI once considered acquiring it, though they increasingly compete now that OpenAI is building its Codex tool. Anthropic said it will continue to offer its Claude models in Cursor, though the article notes Anthropic relies on SpaceX for $45 billion in data center capacity. OpenAI may also have been motivated by concerns that SpaceX could use OpenAI models to train its own AI, an allegation that surfaced during Musk's deposition in his lawsuit against OpenAI.
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