In a surprising turn of events, 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 acquisition agreement at a $60 billion valuation. This development has brought attention to the significant potential value that could have been realized by FTX's creditors.
SpaceX's decision to acquire Cursor is part of Elon Musk's strategy to enhance his company's AI coding capabilities, an area where he believes his company, xAI, lags behind competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic. The deal is contingent on SpaceX's planned initial public offering, which aims to achieve a $2 trillion valuation. In 2022, Alameda Research, founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, invested $200,000 in Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, acquiring a 5% stake at a $4 million valuation. However, after FTX's collapse, the court-appointed estate sold the stake for the same $200,000, resulting in a potential loss of $3 billion in value.
This significant discrepancy has raised questions about the timing and handling of FTX's bankruptcy administration. Sam Bankman-Fried, currently serving a 25-year federal sentence, has argued that the estate's rapid liquidation of assets destroyed billions in value and that customers could have received more than their initial investments if the assets had been held. The trajectory of Cursor's valuation, from its launch in 2023 to its current value, is one of the steepest in software startup history.
While FTX customers have been reimbursed in full, they did not benefit from the potential upside of the assets sold during the bankruptcy process, including the significant increase in value of the Cursor stake.