Cloud Parts

Cursor

The best-known AI fork of VS Code, with agents, its own coding models and PR review built in; acquired by SpaceX in August 2026.

What it is
Editors and terminals (code editors),AI coding agents
Part of
Fork of Visual Studio Code
Type
Commercial product
Made by
Anysphere (owned by SpaceX since August 2026)
License
Proprietary
Facts checked
9 October 2026
Website

What it is

Cursor is Anysphere’s AI editor, built on the VS Code codebase so that settings, themes and keybindings carry over and most extensions keep working. Four friends who met at MIT started the company, and by October 2023 it was already a fork of VS Code with AI that could answer questions about a codebase. Its AI goes well beyond an extension: Tab completion that predicts your next edit, an agent that plans and edits across files, cloud agents that work on remote machines, and Bugbot, which reviews pull requests on GitHub.

Cursor 2.0 (October 2025) put agents rather than files at the centre: a layout for running many agents in parallel, each isolated in its own git worktree or on a remote machine, plus Composer, Cursor’s first in-house coding model, which it says is four times faster than similarly intelligent models. Extensions come from the Open VSX registry through Cursor’s own proxy, which scans them for malware before offering them, and Anysphere publishes its own builds of some extensions that are only on Microsoft’s Marketplace.

Cursor is no longer independent. In April 2026 it began training its models on SpaceX’s Colossus infrastructure, and on August 14, 2026 SpaceX completed its acquisition of the company. Its Grok 4.6 (August 2026) and Grok 4.7 (September 2026) models come out of that combined work.

Why teams pick it

  • Familiar from day one: VS Code settings, themes and keybindings import directly, and most popular extensions are on Open VSX
  • Agents built into the editor rather than squeezed through the extension API: parallel agents in git worktrees, cloud agents, and PR review with Bugbot
  • Its own fast coding models alongside third-party ones
  • Widely used: 14.9% of Stack Overflow 2026 respondents used it regularly, more than any other editor built around AI

Watch out for

  • Proprietary, and owned by SpaceX since August 2026, so its roadmap is now tied to SpaceX’s model training
  • No Microsoft Marketplace: some extensions aren’t on Open VSX, and the same extension id there can belong to a different publisher than on Microsoft’s Marketplace
  • Microsoft-only extensions such as Remote - SSH and the C# debugger are licensed for Microsoft’s products, so Cursor relies on Open VSX alternatives or its own builds

More of the Visual Studio Code family

What all code editors have in common →
VoidArchivedOpen sourceForksAn open-source, VS Code-based AI editor that sent prompts straight to any model provider; paused in August 2025 and deprecated and archived in June 2026.Windsurf (now Devin Desktop)RenamedCommercialForksCodeium’s agentic fork of VS Code, bought by Cognition in July 2025 and renamed Devin Desktop on June 2, 2026.

How it fits with other technologies

See it in a real stack

No architecture uses Cursor yet. Drop it into the playground and wire it up yourself.Open playground →
Where it came from2023–2026

Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark and Aman Sanger met at MIT and shared a goal: an IDE that could speed up everyday programming. Rather than write an extension, they forked VS Code, so they could change the editor itself while keeping a familiar editing environment. In October 2023 their company, Anysphere, raised an $8 million seed round led by the OpenAI Startup Fund; Cursor had tens of thousands of users and over $1 million in annual recurring revenue.

Growth came fast. Cursor reported over 40,000 customers with a $60 million Series A in August 2024, more than $100 million in recurring revenue with a $105 million Series B in January 2025, over $500 million with a $900 million round at a $9.9 billion valuation in June 2025, and $1 billion in annualized revenue with a $2.3 billion Series D at $29.3 billion in November 2025. Along the way it shipped Cursor 1.0 (June 2025) with Bugbot and its Background Agent, and Cursor 2.0 (October 2025) with the Composer model and a multi-agent interface.

Training better models needed more compute than Cursor had. In April 2026 it partnered with SpaceX to train on SpaceX’s Colossus infrastructure, in a deal that gave SpaceX the right to buy the company for $60 billion. SpaceX completed the acquisition on August 14, 2026.

Why it’s built this way

Fork VS Code instead of writing an extension or a new editor
A fork let the team change the editor itself for AI while keeping VS Code’s editing, extensions and settings, so developers could switch without relearning their tools.
Train its own models
Cursor wanted completions and agent turns fast enough to keep a developer in flow. Composer was trained for low-latency agentic coding, completing most turns in under 30 seconds, and the hunger for training compute led to the SpaceX deal.
Agents first, files second
As agents did more of the coding, Cursor saw reviewing and testing their changes become the bottleneck. Cursor 2.0 centred the interface on agents, with faster review of their diffs and a built-in browser so an agent can test its own work.
Open VSX through its own proxy
Microsoft’s Marketplace isn’t available to forks, so Cursor uses Open VSX, and routes it through its own proxy to scan extensions for malware and supply-chain attacks first.

Timeline

  1. 2023

    Anysphere raises an $8M seed led by the OpenAI Startup Fund

  2. 2024

    $60M Series A; over 40,000 customers

  3. 2025

    Cursor 1.0 in June with Bugbot; Cursor 2.0 and the Composer model in October

  4. 2025

    $2.3B Series D at a $29.3B valuation; $1B in annualized revenue

  5. 2026

    Partners with SpaceX on model training in April

  6. 2026

    Acquired by SpaceX on August 14

Sources11 · facts checked 9 October 2026

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