In a stunning 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 recent agreement to acquire the company at a $60 billion valuation. This deal, announced by SpaceX, grants the company the option to purchase Cursor later this year for $60 billion or pay $10 billion if the full acquisition does not proceed. The move is part of Elon Musk's strategy to close the gap with competitors OpenAI and Anthropic in the AI coding tools sector. Notably, SpaceX is delaying the acquisition due to its upcoming initial public offering, which targets a $2 trillion valuation, with the $10 billion serving as a breakup fee.
The connection to the crypto world lies in Alameda Research's $200,000 investment in Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, in April 2022. This investment, which bought around 5% of the company at a $4 million valuation, was sold by the FTX estate for the same amount after the company's collapse. The significant disparity between the sale price and the current valuation of $3 billion, representing a 15,000x return, underscores the substantial missed recovery for the estate's creditors.
This incident occurs amidst Sam Bankman-Fried's arguments from prison that the FTX estate prematurely liquidated assets, potentially destroying billions in value, and that customers could have received more than their initial investments if the assets had been held. The trajectory of Cursor, which launched its AI coding product in early 2023 and reached a $60 billion valuation just three years later, is one of the steepest in software startup history.
While FTX customers have been reimbursed in full, plus interest, under the bankruptcy distribution plan, they did not benefit from the upside of the assets sold during the bankruptcy process, including the substantial increase in value of the Cursor stake.