In April 2023, FTX's bankruptcy estate sold a 5% stake in AI coding startup Cursor for $200,000, a stake now valued at approximately $3 billion following SpaceX's agreement to acquire the company at a $60 billion valuation. This substantial increase in value has brought attention to the significant missed recoveries in crypto history. SpaceX's acquisition is part of Elon Musk's efforts to enhance his company's AI coding capabilities, an area where he believes his company, xAI, lags behind competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic.

The acquisition is slated to occur later this year, with SpaceX having the option to purchase Cursor for $60 billion or pay a $10 billion breakup fee if the full acquisition does not proceed. The deal is tied to SpaceX's planned initial public offering, which aims for a $2 trillion valuation. The crypto aspect of this story lies 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 FTX's estate for the same $200,000 after the company's collapse.

The significant gap between the sale price and the current valuation represents a 15,000x return, a sum that could have been realized by FTX's creditors if the estate had not liquidated the asset. This development has awkward timing for FTX's bankruptcy administration, as it supports Sam Bankman-Fried's argument that the estate destroyed billions in value by liquidating assets too quickly.

Bankman-Fried has suggested that FTX's net asset value could have reached $78 billion if the estate had held assets instead of selling them during the bankruptcy. 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 under the bankruptcy's distribution plan, they did not receive the upside from the assets' increased value, including the $3 billion forgone recovery from the Cursor stake.

This significant missed opportunity is likely to be a focal point in Bankman-Fried's continued arguments and his family's campaign for a pardon.