Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceX

I may be a rare Cursor user around here, but I am saddened by this news. The thing that keeps me using it is precisely the ability to switch between models: I usually do brainstorm/planning with Sol or Terra, then let Composer (free) deal with the implementation. For certain tasks I use Claude, which tends to be more expensive but sometimes saves me time.

Using both OpenAI and Anthropic models, Cursor is cheaper than having two separate subscriptions, and their free tier of Composer is good enough. I will now have to reconsider my options.

Anthropic already banned xAI for very similar ToS violations earlier this year: https://x.com/kyliebytes/status/2009686466746822731?s=46

So this is OpenAI following suit after Musk admitted to distilling their models.

This was bound to happen once Cursor decided to sell itself to a competing model provider.

It'll be interesting to see if Anthropic applies their ban to Cursor, or if that datacenter deal they signed with Musk changes anything.

It's always been clear to me that Cursor's business model of reselling others' APIs had its days numbered. Not necessarily because the providers would pull the plug, but because you wouldn't be able to compete with subsidized plans.

Cursor is already kind of useless for third party models unless you're willing to spend thousands of dollars. It's only worth it if you're going to use mostly grok/composer.

While this isn't great for users it seems like a pretty standard circling of the wagons in preparation for the next phase in the battle for frontier AI dominance.

Ironically, as a Cursor and Claude subscriber, but not an OpenAI subscriber, this will push me back to Anthropic. I don't feel good about giving OpenAI money directly, but I've found switching to GPT 5.6 Sol now and again in Cursor to be useful. Now I'll probably just forget about OpenAI models.

I don't see how it makes sense to use models outside of Grok or Composer in cursor unless you like the tooling to such degree that you're willing to pay out the nose for access to OpenAI and Anthropic to use with that tooling. And Codex is regularly scoring towards the top among harnesses, so you might as well use the best harness available for the given model. I'm happy with Grok and Composer in Cursor. If Cursor wants to add more models, they should host more open models.

If you have such a world changing technology, why sell an API when you can capture all the value yourself? That's what every provider is asking themselves.

Cursor will be fine after this, as they have their own first party models and can potentially use open weight models via API or their own hardware, which have gotten good enough to Opus and Fable quality now for many use cases.

Everyone is playing hardball. No one wants to be IBM in an IBM-Microsoft dance.

But this is kind of like banning GPU exports to China. It will encourage them to develop their own technology. Yes, it will take them longer, but in the long-run China will be more successful with their own GPU tech.

The same could be true of SpaceX/xAI

> As AI capabilities advance, we also have a new level of accountability to ensure our upcoming model, Astra, is being used in accordance with our terms.

I think Sam Altman has played a clever business move here, they can use this excuse immediately after the Hugging Face leaks and it's not going to be dismissed willy-nilly. Whereas long term they probably wanted to end their partnership with Cursor anyway. I bet Dario will be happy about this too, but maybe the compute deal prevents him from doing similar anytime soon.

Very interesting times we live in...

Cursor founder just tweeted that he was sad to see this ban and that OpenAI model represented around 5% of total usage.

Burn.

> As AI capabilities advance, we also have a new level of accountability to ensure our upcoming model, Astra, is being used in accordance with our terms.

This move seems to protect Astra against distillation. I wonder whether Astra will be released before or after 11/12.

Bummed, but I guess for me, doesn't mean cursor subscription ending though. Grok is a pretty amazing model for the speed and price on Cursor.

My guess is that OpenAI now has a full blown Cursor equivalent in development (an expansion of Codex?) and will announce it in September. Otherwise it stands to lose those who are used to working with Cursor.

Damn; Cursor has basically no value if Anthropic pulls the same move. Twitter Part 2 indeed.

> We know that the people most affected by this decision are the developers who rely on OpenAI models in Cursor. We care about their experience in this transition and we’re ready to go above and beyond to support them.

Do I smell a cursor-analogue from openAI?

It was honestly just a matter of time, given all of the bad blood there is between Sam and Elon and Elon basically admitting under oath they were distilling other companies models.

I wonder if Anthropic will follow suit given their campaign against distillation or if they'll stay quiet given their reliance on SpaceX (among others) for hardware.

Honestly, can't say I miss my Cursor subscription at all, and I'm surprised they're still a going concern. Why would I want to use a proprietary VSCode fork with an identity crisis when I can use literally any editor with any agent and have about the same experience?

Not surprised, but honestly I don't feel like this is a huge loss for cursor. Models are so commoditized, and 99% of users don't need particularly fancy models. Between existing anthropic models, composer-2, honestly even grok models, and also the fact that many people just use 'auto' mode, I feel like many won't feel the impact for OpenAI's withdrawal.

Maybe if Claude joined along it would be more impactful. For better or worse though, Xai seems like its lining themselves up to handle being on their own for cursor.

Allowing the company or harness to dictate which models you use is crazy.

Why would they give the maximum time instead of the minimum given violation has already occurred?

This is personal, not business.

OpenAI / Sam Altman is probably even shadier than musk

Feels like scam altam writes the openai blog posts himself. The way Musk is brought up feels very 'mean girl'y

This low key confirms Astra for November

It's going to be tough for Origin, their code hosting platform, to follow in the footsteps of GitHub, if they can't be treated as a neutral party.

Spend a lot of time thinking about why individuals shouldn't trust large AI cos, now it's interesting getting to think about how the AI companies themselves don't trust each other. Capitalism is viciously cold and uncaring.

Wow, I don’t use cursor but that seems pretty bad for them.

Is there a way to work around this (like using your OpenAI limits directly?)

> 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.

> After Musk acquired Twitter, now part of SpaceX, the company broke (opens in a new window) the terms of our contract (alongside many others).

I have never seen one large company throw another large company under the bus without any legalese filters like this before. Wondering if OpenAI site got pwned. Or maybe we in some strange, alternative reality. I doubt even their LLMs would be this frank.

they’ll see an uptick in codex user count trying the new models and can build a narrative around that too

So Astra release Friday 13th November!?

Models are now having much tighter integration with harness.

It's gunna to happen anyway.

We are sailing into the age of vertically integrated intelligence.

I guess I’m on the right track.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49428835

If Claude pulls away from Cursor as well then Cursor is basically done.

i don't see the point of cursor when vsc + codex extension does the same thing. i don't use autocomplete anymore (who writes code anymore? lol) any and anyone using grok unironically is also probably a moron.

i only tell VC type people or others from whom i want something "oh yeah grok is cool" if they mention it, because they're always sucking off Elon

Days until cursor announces open models… 3, 2, 1…

Seriously though, when the api providers start blacklisting cursor and they’re forced to swap to open weight models…

If that happens, what even is the difference between openrouter and cursor?

Makes sense.

[dead]

What happened to researchers embracing the open research culture of improving on the results of others?

this is a pretty clean test of whether people were buying cursor or just using it for convenient access to whichever model was flavor of the week.

i work in qa so i'm naturally wary of adding another critical dependency to a development workflow, if the model you actually want can just disappear because two vendor change ownership or start argueing then the wrapper has to be really good on its own.

cursors harness and its own models may be good enough that users stay, and if they do cursor has a moat at least. if everyone follows the openai models out the door, it will just become a polished ui.