OpenAI is cutting off Cursor after SpaceX bought the coding startup, walking away from a customer worth more than $1 billion a year so it does not have to deal with Elon Musk.
According to WIRED, the ChatGPT maker said it would wind down its contract to provide models to Cursor, one of the better-known AI coding editors.
The decision follows SpaceX’s reported $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, which pulled the startup into Elon Musk’s expanding collection of AI-adjacent businesses.
OpenAI said it could not trust SpaceX to adhere to its terms of service, citing prior contract issues involving Musk-controlled entities.
The split is awkward because Cursor had become one of OpenAI’s biggest customers, sitting among its top five by revenue at the start of 2026.
By the spring, OpenAI reportedly expected Cursor to generate more than $1 billion in annualised revenue, making the retreat a costly bit of housekeeping.
The company appears willing to lose short-term cash to show investors it can manage risk before a planned public offering next year.
Cursor’s boss, Anysphere chief executive Michael Truell, played down the damage and said OpenAI models handled about five per cent of Cursor user traffic.
OpenAI’s core products head, Thibault Sottiaux, pushed back, saying token usage was not the same as revenue or value created.
Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown said Claude would remain available in Cursor, showing that AI coding alliances are getting more political by the week.
