A 5% stake in AI coding startup Cursor, sold by FTX's bankruptcy estate for $200,000 in April 2023, would now be worth approximately $3 billion following SpaceX's agreement to acquire the company at a $60 billion valuation. This development comes as SpaceX plans to acquire Cursor later this year, with the option to pay $10 billion if the full acquisition does not proceed, primarily driven by Elon Musk's efforts to close the gap with competitors in AI coding tools. The deal is tied to SpaceX's planned initial public offering, which targets a $2 trillion valuation.
The crypto aspect of this deal is rooted in Alameda Research's $200,000 investment in Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, in April 2022. This investment, which bought roughly 5% of the company at a $4 million valuation, was sold by the FTX estate for the same amount after the company's collapse.
The significant gap between the sale price and the current valuation of $3 billion represents a missed recovery of about 15,000 times the initial investment, which could have been realized by FTX's creditors if the estate had not liquidated the asset. This incident supports the argument made by Sam Bankman-Fried, currently serving a federal sentence, that FTX's estate destroyed billions in value by liquidating assets too quickly during the bankruptcy process.
Bankman-Fried has suggested that if the estate had held onto the assets, including the Cursor stake, FTX's net asset value could have reached $78 billion, allowing customers to receive more than their initial investments. The case of the Cursor stake, which has seen one of the steepest valuations in software startup history, is likely to be a key point in Bankman-Fried's continued arguments and his family's campaign for a pardon.