The bankruptcy estate of FTX sold a 5% stake in AI coding startup Cursor for $200,000 in April 2023. Following SpaceX's recent agreement to acquire the company at a $60 billion valuation, this stake would now be worth approximately $3 billion. Elon Musk's SpaceX has the option to purchase Cursor later this year for $60 billion or pay $10 billion if the acquisition does not proceed, as part of his efforts to close the gap with competitors in AI coding tools.
The deal has brought attention to FTX's missed opportunity, as the stake was sold for the same amount Alameda Research had invested in the company just a year prior. This significant loss has been cited by Sam Bankman-Fried, currently serving a 25-year federal sentence, as an example of the billions in value destroyed by the estate's rapid liquidation of assets during the bankruptcy process.
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 greater recoveries if assets had been held rather than sold. The Cursor stake's trajectory, with a valuation increase from $4 million to $60 billion in just three years, is among the steepest in software startup history, and is likely to feature prominently in discussions about the case against Bankman-Fried and the estate's handling of assets.