alt Hacker Newsknee-jerk is that it's weird, but makes sense:
* X will have a total of ~2GW of GPU sometime this year largely not doing much outside of 'grok is this true'
* despite no longer being in vogue with consumer devs Cursor still has a lot of developer data that can assist in building a model
* Cursor have decent enterprise relationships (while for xAI it is ~zero) and that's where the real revenue for llms + agents is
* Cursor are paying retail for tokens and competing against the frontier model co's who are also their suppliers. Not sustainable (hence their in-house composer model).
* Cursor the product covers the gamut from lovable-style prompt-to-app, an IDE, cli and bugbot
* X are using "x bucks" to pay for a potential later acquisition which are arguably overvalued based on the space x IPO hype
Option there to give X a window to make it work, otherwise walk away with a $10B breakup fee for access to it's data
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Forgot that claude is burning good will from it's own capacity constraints, leading to periods of 'dumbness'. It's a catalyst to cause me and others to switch back to cursor if they can get their act together
You've literally got tools like opencode that are MIT licensed. Most of those points X could do on their own or are things that make this attractive for cursor not X.
e.g. Need developer data? Use some of that spare GPU compute, hand out free top end model coding access for a bit and you'll very rapidly have developer data
>decent enterprise relationships
I guess. 60B worth of "relationships" though?
I wouldn't be surprised if those enterprise relationships evaporate after this acquisition. There's a reason why xAI has zero enterprise customers.
> Cursor still has a lot of developer data that can assist in building a model
Their composer model is seriously good. I’ve been eyeing a cursor sub just to use it in OpenCode. They have a nice moat here.
> Cursor have decent enterprise relationships (while for xAI it is ~zero)
That has a reason. Those enterprise relationships are almost certainly going to sour at least a bit, if not for Musk‘s toxic image then for his erratic behavior.
Yes I think you're right. Reinforcement learning is extremely compute heavy, which cursor doesn't have. And X.ai doesn't have the coding agent data anthropic/OpenAI has, but does have the compute.
However, one thing in AI is that while the usage goes up extremely quickly, it tends to go down just as fast. I know a lot of companies that are in the process of switching from Cursor to Claude Code, so in 6-12 months I'm not entirely sure of the data quality/quantity.
Also I think it is telling that they are calling them SpaceX not X. The X brand is absolutely toxic, especially in enterprise.
I think you're right. Other providers can offer coding subscriptions that use in-house models, and this sets the stage for a Grok coding plan that's built in to Cursor.
$60 billion seems expensive, but it gives them a much better chance at competing in the market than if they started their own harness from scratch.
I think it also represents a bet that in some sense Cursor's model capabilities are resource limited rather than talent limited. If that's true, $60B will end up being a bargain. If not true, well it's an expensive lesson but that's the nature of things.
> despite no longer being in vogue with consumer devs
Is it in vogue with enterprise devs?
hn is this true
British?
“Cursor have” and “Cursor are” is awkward to read.
> largely not doing much outside of 'grok is this true'
Hey now, don't forget about it's super important other use, taking innocent photos of people and regenerating them in less clothing and compromising positions.
I'm sad that I even know that.