Following SpaceX's agreement to acquire Cursor at a $60 billion valuation, it has been revealed that a 5% stake in the AI coding startup, sold by FTX's bankruptcy estate for $200,000 in April 2023, would now be worth approximately $3 billion. This development is a result of SpaceX's planned acquisition, which is part of Elon Musk's strategy to enhance his company's AI coding capabilities and close the gap with competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic. The deal is contingent on SpaceX's planned initial public offering, targeting a $2 trillion valuation, with a $10 billion breakup fee if the full acquisition does not proceed. The investment in Cursor was initially made by Alameda Research, a trading firm founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, in April 2022, with a $200,000 investment for a 5% stake in the company at a $4 million valuation.
After FTX's collapse, the court-appointed estate sold the stake for the same $200,000, resulting in a significant missed opportunity for the estate's creditors. This gap represents a 15,000x return, which would have been realized if the stake had been held instead of being sold. The timing of this revelation is awkward for FTX's bankruptcy administration, as Sam Bankman-Fried has been arguing that the estate's liquidation of assets too quickly destroyed billions in value. He has projected that FTX's net asset value would have reached $78 billion if the estate had held assets instead of selling them in 2023 and 2024.
The trajectory of Cursor's valuation, from its launch in early 2023 to its current valuation, is one of the steepest in software startup history. While FTX customers have been repaid in full, they did not receive the upside from the assets sold during the bankruptcy, including the significant increase in value of the Cursor stake.