In April 2023, FTX's bankruptcy estate sold a 5% stake in AI coding startup Cursor for $200,000. Following SpaceX's agreement to acquire the company at a $60 billion valuation, that same stake would now be worth around $3 billion.
The deal marks a significant move by Elon Musk to bridge the gap with competitors in AI coding tools. The crypto community is taking note of the massive missed recovery, as the stake's value has increased by approximately 15,000 times. This development comes as Sam Bankman-Fried, currently serving a 25-year sentence, argues that FTX's estate destroyed billions in value by liquidating assets too quickly during the bankruptcy.
The timing of the sale has raised questions about the administration of FTX's bankruptcy, particularly given Bankman-Fried's claims that customers could have received more if the process had been handled differently. The Cursor stake's trajectory from its launch in 2023 to its current valuation is one of the steepest in software startup history, and its value represents a significant portion of the forgone recovery for FTX customers.