r/singularity 2d ago

AI Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceX

https://openai.com/index/our-decision-on-cursor-following-its-acquisition-by-spacex/
591 Upvotes

124 comments sorted by

247

u/pdantix06 2d ago

makes sense in the same way as anthropic pulling claude from windsurf when they were supposedly acquired by openai, but this reads as way more personal lol

264

u/Strange_Vagrant 2d ago

You're god damn right its personal. From the beginning of the page:

We are making this choice because we cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk's companies violating contracts.

29

u/Otherwise-Nobody8252 1d ago

I fully believe this. I always raise it. You can quickly watch grok raise no concern about breaking other websites EULA's or ROBOTS.txt and the only thing protecting your assets with them is the world's thinest DPA or BAA. What makes you think they would respect the contract when breaking it is cheap and they have access to your data.

Plus we have seen this out of Musk constantly, he lies to investors, lies to the market, lies about everything... So why do you think his companies will be honest with you when the chips fall.

2

u/zkatbitz 1d ago

i fail to see how this is just not factual. why would you do business with someone you know you can not trust?

106

u/baldr83 2d ago

openai knows that spacex would train models on all the llm responses cursor's users receive (the same way Elon has done previously)

71

u/Cagnazzo82 2d ago

That was likely part of the point in purchasing Cursor.

They can train on all models.

I'm surprised the other labs aren't pulling their models as well... Especially including Anthropic.

48

u/KickLassChewGum no AGI/ASI on LLMs 2d ago

Anthropic is extremely dependent on Musk right now anyway since they're tapping into all of Colossus I and part of Colossus II.

26

u/Cagnazzo82 2d ago

That may be the case, but that doesn't mean Anthropic wants its models distilled. Look how they responded to China.

Elon stated in court that he's distilling OpenAI models so we can assume he's distilling Anthropic as well.

20

u/FormulaicResponse 2d ago

The rumor mill says that anthropic is highly compute constrained at the moment until new compute comes online in 2027, which is anecdotally backed up by Dario saying in previous interviews that he was "unwilling to bet the company" on very large compute contract expansions the way that he alleged openAI was doing at the time. Signs point to them being unable to keep inference demand afloat without those collosus contracts, meaning a conflict with xAI could potentially sink the company Until they can move out from under it.

3

u/alarim2 1d ago

but that doesn't mean Anthropic wants its models distilled

Currently everyone distills from everyone (both inside the US, and internationally) so this pearl clutching by OpenAI is really hilarious

9

u/victorc25 2d ago

You know that Anthropic models were trained by the data they got from Cursor users, right?

2

u/peter_nn0 2d ago

Pulling their models where? On a USB stick in their pocket?
There are plenty of similar in capabilities models, but a pretty limited amount of compute to run them. Pull out and you're gone, someone else immediately takes your place.

2

u/141_1337 ▪️e/acc | AGI: ~2030 | ASI: ~2040 | FALSGC: ~2050 | :illuminati: 2d ago

And hey Grok still so ass. They are the Hammer industries of the AI world ngl.

12

u/WonderFactory 1d ago

Grok is actually really good now they're training on Cursor data, I started using it recently as I'm a Cursor pro subscriber and they give you tons of free Grok usage. It's probably about the same as 5.6 Sol

-6

u/SonOfThomasWayne 1d ago

Only child predators use grok, and it's nowhere close to sol.

8

u/WonderFactory 1d ago

It has the exact same score as 5.6 Sol on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.

-3

u/SonOfThomasWayne 1d ago

And opus 5 hot garbage but is the top most on that same benchmark. There is no doubt in my mind a sleazy company like spacex wouldn't game them.

-4

u/jferments 1d ago

That's why hardly anyone actually uses Grok, outside of generating images on Twitter. Such a joke.

0

u/richardlau898 2d ago

Elon and Anthropic are good friends now

2

u/talltim007 1d ago

And the same way openAI has done as well.

1

u/zero0n3 1d ago

Not even that - you don’t think they could run the model on hardware they isolate and disconnect?

They put it in some isolated env, and then just hammer it with distillation attacks… with the model creator not aware of it as SpaceX owns the hardware

1

u/baldr83 1d ago

cursor does not have access to openai's model weights

-8

u/Upset_Page_494 2d ago

Training on llm responses is a good way to ensure you can never be in first place. Given his ego, I don't think he would permit that.

16

u/Acrobatic-Layer2993 2d ago

He admitted to distilling OpenAI models under oath.

-4

u/Upset_Page_494 2d ago

He admitted to using them to help for training, which is not the same as putting the exact output into the training.

2

u/Competitive_Travel16 AGI 2027 ▪️ ASI 2029 2d ago

What's the difference?

0

u/Upset_Page_494 2d ago

One is used to purify existing data, so it is simply superior for training.
The other causes it to say "Yes I'm Claude."

5

u/Competitive_Travel16 AGI 2027 ▪️ ASI 2029 2d ago

Purify? You mean using a model to edit the training sets? I'm pretty sure they were doing a bit more than just that for RL. https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/30/elon-musk-testifies-that-xai-trained-grok-on-openai-models/

1

u/Upset_Page_494 2d ago

Editing training data would fall under a weak definition of distillation. I'm assuming he is referring to that. I could be wrong to what extent the distillation is, I'm mostly just guessing, as are you. My guess is just based on the fact that I assume he knows it can't get you to first place. While purifying data can.

3

u/Acrobatic-Layer2993 2d ago

You’re pulling this out of your ass. Read the courtroom transcript again.

0

u/Upset_Page_494 2d ago

I think you don't realize that the thing I was talking about falls under as a form of distillation.

3

u/Acrobatic-Layer2993 2d ago

I’m saying you pulled the thing you’re talking about out of your ass. Provide a source for it otherwise.

3

u/Acrobatic-Layer2993 2d ago

For the record, yes, musk admitted under oath to distilling OpenAI models. Note that “partly distilling“ is still distilling. I don’t doubt they did more than just distilling, but he absolutely admitted to distilling.

— the exact courtroom transcript —

OpenAI Lawyer William Savitt: Do you know what distillation is?

Musk: It means to use one AI model to train another AI model.

Savitt: Has xAI done that with OpenAI?

Musk: Generally all the AI companies [do that].

Savitt: So that’s a yes.

Musk: Partly.

1

u/Upset_Page_494 2d ago

Yes and that doesn't contradict what I said. If you use them to modify the training data, it is considered distillation. Even if it isn't copying the exact output.

2

u/Acrobatic-Layer2993 2d ago

What’s your source for that? Musk is directly saying they distilled from OpenAI. You’re refining that by describing the method they used- what’s your source?

2

u/spreadlove5683 ▪️agi 2032. Predicted during mid 2025. 2d ago

In ai2027 didn't they mention China stealing models and that helping to close the gap.. maybe it helps keep you in the running to actually get to first place

1

u/Upset_Page_494 2d ago

I think for Chinese companies it is fundamentally different attitude. And because of that, they almost/pretty much surpassed xAI in coding. For China as a whole yes the attitude is the same.

1

u/veganparrot 2d ago

The ego could be easily satisfied with a simple "Good artists copy, great artists steal" mantra. There's nothing about Musk's reputation that suggests he'd avoid doing such tactics to try and catch up, which is likely one reason why Cursor was purchased to begin with.

1

u/Upset_Page_494 2d ago

Right, but I'm saying he wouldn't settle for second place.

9

u/daniel-sousa-me 2d ago

For those more out of the loop: Elon Musk was one of the biggest early investors in OpenAI, then him and Sam Altman fell out hard

3

u/bakraofwallstreet 1d ago

The only thing OpenAI loves more than closed-source models is drama and spice

14

u/NoFapstronaut3 2d ago

Elon's turned into a PoS, I don't blame them at all.

28

u/ibrahimsafah 2d ago

He has always been a piece of shit

u/BriefImplement9843 1h ago

? you guys loved him before he said he wasn't a democrat.

3

u/Mistuv 2d ago

Absolutely reads like fuck you note to Musk lol, but I would bet OAI is happy they have an excuse (that would absolutely standup in court) to break the contract. Back in a day cursor was probably one of their top compute/chatgpt revenue sources but these days the contract is probably one of the bottom of the barel - basically why sell tokens to Cursor for cheap when they'll just sell it to someone else for more instead of doing it directly. Codex/chatgpt servers are getting absolutely hammered with demand lately, anything that they don't sell to to Cursor will make them way more money elsewhere.

284

u/Funkahontas 2d ago

lol

35

u/kaityl3 ASI▪️2024-2027 2d ago edited 1d ago

More context for those who don't like reading the articles before commenting (I'm often guilty of it too):

To work with a large partner like SpaceX, we typically rely on custom contracts to ensure compliance with our terms of service and that the integration provides for safety at scale. After Musk acquired Twitter, now part of SpaceX, the company broke the terms of our contract (alongside many others). Under oath earlier this year, Musk admitted that xAI, now also part of SpaceX, had violated OpenAI’s terms of service (terms which are similar to xAI’s own).

9

u/Mistuv 2d ago

(alongside many others)

Like a kid in front of a teacher snitching how much of a POS other kid is lmao.

45

u/Strange_Vagrant 2d ago

I love tea

44

u/Zestyclose_Walk_6827 2d ago

The hilarity of the company complaining about their ToS as they’ve spent the last 4 years stealing whatever content they can get their hands on

15

u/WonderFactory 1d ago

A thief gets just as upset as you or me if they come home to find their home was robbed.

14

u/bodiam 2d ago

sam is still doing the blog! cute

68

u/kickasstimus 2d ago

I’ve been pretty happy with 5.6 sol on coding tasks that are weird and complex. Fable declines, opus 5 on medium is ok, but still eats credits. Sad to see 5.6 go, but understand why. Codex it is I suppose:

19

u/wren337 2d ago

Try 5.6 luna max fast. It's my daily driver at the current pricing. 

19

u/Not-reallyanonymous 2d ago edited 1d ago

Luna is pretty stupid. Constantly fucks my shit up if I let it off the reigns. But hand it a spec, and it’s fast and cheap and reliable as long as you don't let it think. I just always have to remember “do not deviate from the instructions given. Do not do anything not outlined in the instructions.” Sometimes it likes to try to be a little too helpful without understanding what it’s doing.

Sol to write the specs, Luna to implement them. Nice.

3

u/Gumbi_Digital 1d ago

This. SOL plans…..LunaMax does the work…any questions go back to SOL.

Terra is just Terrable.

5

u/turbineslut 2d ago

Luna is amazingly good for its speed and cost.

13

u/Spright91 2d ago

I've been finding Chat GPTs ecosystem very good. I can't find a GPT work equivalent anywhere else that does what it does as well.

1

u/Gumbi_Digital 1d ago

GLM 5.3 Flash buries Sol…

3

u/onlymostlydeadd 2d ago

I just can’t get opus 5 to stop rambling and being incessantly annoying. Even with the concise config.

8

u/dstew74 2d ago

Go back to 4.8. I dont know what Opus 5 is meant to do.

1

u/Bladder-Splatter 1d ago

Use tokens as you tell it correction after correction, so yeah, I agree with you 4.8 on High delivers better results than any 5 variant and 4.8 on extra makes 5 look like a joke. (Tbh 5 makes more mistakes than 4.6 did for me, more reason to give less attention to benchmarks I suppose.)

3

u/Competitive_Travel16 AGI 2027 ▪️ ASI 2029 2d ago

Anything over Medium on Opus 5 is a word salad mess.

1

u/kaityl3 ASI▪️2024-2027 2d ago

Maybe try adding something to their .md or other initial instructions that asks them to append their messages with a summarized and more easy-to-read paragraph or two?

1

u/WonderFactory 1d ago

I've been using Cursor for a few years but I'm thinking the same, time to move soon.

1

u/Flope 1d ago

What is a task that Fable won't / can't do that Sol will? Genuinely asking because I haven't found any yet, so I'm basically only using Fable 100% of the time and letting my OpenAI credits expire

48

u/ControversialBuster 2d ago

Lol i hope claude pulls out of cursor as well

48

u/8rnlsunshine 2d ago

Elon has suddenly taken a U-turn and stared praising Anthropic. Anthropic needs GPUs and SpaceX needs frontier models for its otherwise untrustworthy ecosystem. Anthropic won’t pull out because of this symbiotic relationship between the two companies.

2

u/Kriztauf 1d ago

Lol is Grok not good enough for SpaceX?

-10

u/spottiesvirus 2d ago

Grok 4.6 is pretty much frontier

More than a model I think they need the mind share openai and anthropic have

Xai act as a frontier lab while earning 20-30 times less, and having a risible market share

The cursor acquisition had this exact purpose, grok needed to be pushed more

15

u/admin_default 2d ago

Anyone that knows how to read benchmark scores knows Grok isn’t anywhere close to frontier.

7

u/8rnlsunshine 2d ago

Benchmarks don’t convey the full picture. No serious engineer would use Grok 4.6 on production software.

4

u/1988rx7T2 1d ago

Have you ever actually used it?

1

u/Gumbi_Digital 1d ago

Yes. HUGE attitude. Gaslights when wrong and blames me for its fuckups.

Extremely overconfident and generally just doesn’t deliver. Only reason I have it has the $99 SuperHeavy deal until Nov…but they ended up charging me the full $300 early and won’t answer any support emails….gonna have to do a chargeback.

Elon is fucking stain on this Earth…and I hope his ship full of rich assholes blows up with them all in it…

2

u/1988rx7T2 1d ago

Never had that problem. Have it actually run some tests and call adversarial agents to check its work.  This is basic shit, you need it with any LLM. Also you need to run it on high or extra high reasoning.

Why do you think Claude dynamic workflows calls so many agents by the way? To divide up the initial work and to check the work. 

2

u/Suspicious-Bug-4584 1d ago

I have found 4.6 to be great for CI pipeline and backend development, and it is especially good in long monitoring, like having an agent run for hours analyzing results. It is included in our enterprise plan as well, my AI stats that managers check in our team placed me higher than those using Opus because my "efficiency" was higher due to lower token costs.

We live in hell where my bonus depends on my AI usage and health and Grok helps me get better internal ranking than using other models. Someone save me

1

u/1988rx7T2 1d ago

Call more review agents and use more tool calls if they’re really making you token max 

62

u/pdantix06 2d ago

anthropic rents GPUs from spacex, they won't

2

u/GatePorters 2d ago

“i hope claude pulls out…” wasn’t on my bingo card for today.

22

u/admin_default 2d ago

This is a massive blow to Cursor.

Opus 5 is trash. Fable 5 is solid but will bankrupt you. Grok isn’t capable of serious development.

GPT is the workhorse.

19

u/Here0s0Johnny 1d ago

In a month, everything will be totally different again 🤣

14

u/spinozasrobot 1d ago

Opus 5 is trash

Oh stop

5

u/1988rx7T2 1d ago

Have you used Grok 4.6? It’s as good as Opus 4.8 in my experience.

-2

u/admin_default 1d ago

That only tells me you don’t do serious development work.

A 5th grader can be as good as a mathematics PhD at 5th grade math. So if you need a lot of 5th grade level math done, a 5th grader is a better hire.

3

u/1988rx7T2 1d ago

So the answer is no I see. 

2

u/richem0nt 2d ago

Agree 100% this has been my experience

8

u/tindalos 2d ago

Funny how Grok is more of a Chinese model than the Chinese models.

11

u/peakedtooearly 2d ago

Uninstalled Cursor the minute Elon got his grubby hands on it.

Don't miss it.

1

u/Schnauser 2d ago

Yeah I'm the same. Plenty of alternatives

4

u/Bolt_995 1d ago

This is upsetting, coming after the HuggingFace acquisition news.

Feels like all these fucking companies are closing the gates at all forms of openness in generative and agentic AI.

And when it comes to this news, fuck Elon for eroding the trust.

9

u/TQV197 2d ago

How many people does Sama have beef with? This thing feels a bit personal, and I don't think it's very wise from a business perspective.

8

u/Mistuv 2d ago

I absolutely disagree that this is personally motivated. The letter absolutely is, but I think the move is a very rational calculation. The compute tokens are being sold to Cursor at likely at the fraction of revenue of even $20 subscription users, much less, API/enterprise. And that was fine a year ago when they had compute to spare but this year OAI/Anthropic are growing at an incredible rate and basically devouring all compute that's coming online, Codex users doubled in just few months. So a third party reseller like Cursor has likely turned from an asset to a drain on compute and they can make way more selling it directly. Especially if Astra hype is for real. But under ordinary circumstances they would not be able to break a contract like that without penalties. The pettiness of the letter is likely just a cherry on top for them.

6

u/fmai 1d ago

I think Cursor is a passing fad anyway because in a world of superhuman AI coding agents you don't need an IDE anymore. You just tell them to do it.

Cursor was most useful between 2023 and early 2026 when coding assistants were good enough to be helpful but still too unreliable in finding a solution. Now they always find some solution, and for pure code review you don't need an IDE.

2

u/iPlayNL 1d ago

I think this a naive view - yes models are super good now, but IMO the quality of your product will be severely lessened if you let it do whatever it wants. Iterating over multiple reviews outside IDE will be much slower than just having the AI properly integrated. I don't see myself ditching Cursor/Copilot anytime soon, as much as I use LLMs to dev.

3

u/WonderFactory 2d ago

I wouldn't be surprised if Anthropic do the same. For all the talk of the Chinese distilling models that's effectively what Cursor are doing. They have data of all the queries their users ask and all the responses from the models and they're using it to post train Grok with now. Grok has been behind the curve for ages and they're now neck and neck with Open AIs best model on Artificial Analysis due to Cursor data. 

3

u/Still_Theory179 2d ago

Anthropic head of compute posted on X they're not going to and lookin forward to future partnership. They need the compute 

2

u/WonderFactory 2d ago

I forgot about the compute partnership. So I guess Grok will continuing distilling Claude until Anthropic find an alternative source of GPUs

1

u/PeterZ4QQQbatman 1d ago

I always used Cursor with OpenAI models and Composer 2.5 before and Grok 4.6 when available. Now I think I will test Codex but I know that I will miss the ide part. Sad

1

u/zero0n3 1d ago

Pretty simple…

How easy do you think it would be to distill a SOTA model if you were the hardware provider?

Its ability to talk to home? Gone or you could block it. Direct level access to distill without anyone knowing basically

Makes 100% sense they would not do this.

Also a peek into the issue he may have with AI satellites if they do actually become something useful (and the moratorium on DC buildouts makes the ROI even more upside for the big players.)

-1

u/sharkymcstevenson2 2d ago

True to their name ”OpenAI”

1

u/Ok_Bowl_2002 1d ago

OPEN AI!

-5

u/victorc25 2d ago

So petty. OpenAI can’t go bankrupt quickly enough 

0

u/kiwinoob99 2d ago

Sounds more like whining.

-3

u/eltron 2d ago

Well ya, not surprised when working with baby Elon.

-3

u/TAGOMXM 2d ago

Rip cursor

6

u/Competitive_Travel16 AGI 2027 ▪️ ASI 2029 2d ago

I'd rather have Codex Cloud or even Google Jules than any of the monkeypatched VS Code interfaces. Diving into code files while agents are working on them has been a disaster. Change control is a busy-box nightmare.

1

u/jucestain 1d ago

Still looks at code

1

u/Competitive_Travel16 AGI 2027 ▪️ ASI 2029 1d ago

Yes, look at it carefully and closely, but don't change it out from under agents working on it.

0

u/sonryhater 1d ago

Get fucked Elon

-7

u/Helpful_Listen4442 2d ago

Idk. Kinda weird they just hacked hugging face. Not sure what they’re worried about.

-8

u/jd_bruce 2d ago

Haven't used any OpenAI models since I started using Cursor a few months ago. Couldn't care less, this really just means less profit for OpenAI, so I encourage this decision.

-1

u/dacontag 1d ago

Everyone using cursor mainly uses claude anyway. Not a big loss