In April 2023, FTX's bankruptcy estate sold a 5% stake in AI coding startup Cursor for $200,000, a valuation that has since skyrocketed to approximately $3 billion following SpaceX's agreement to acquire the company at a $60 billion valuation. This substantial increase in value underscores the significant missed recovery for FTX's creditors.
The deal is part of Elon Musk's strategy to enhance SpaceX's AI coding capabilities, an area where the company currently lags behind competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic. The acquisition is contingent on SpaceX's planned initial public offering, which targets a $2 trillion valuation. The Cursor stake was initially acquired by Alameda Research, a trading firm founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, for $200,000 in April 2022, representing a 5% ownership in the company. However, after FTX's collapse, the stake was sold by the court-appointed estate for the same $200,000, resulting in a significant loss of potential recovery for creditors.
This event has sparked controversy, particularly given Bankman-Fried's assertions that the estate's rapid liquidation of assets destroyed billions of dollars in value, which could have been preserved if the assets had been held longer. The trajectory of Cursor's valuation, from its AI coding product launch in 2023 to its current valuation, is one of the steepest in software startup history, with the stake now being worth $3 billion. While FTX customers have been reimbursed in full, they have not benefited from the substantial upside of the assets sold during the bankruptcy process, including the Cursor stake, which represents a forgone recovery of approximately $3 billion.