Why did Elon Musk want Cursor? Know the real story and how MIT grad Aman Sanger sealed $60 billion deal

Aman Sanger was one of four MIT students experimenting with the possibilities of artificial intelligence when he helped establish Anysphere in 2022. Four years later, the company behind AI coding platform Cursor has agreed to be acquired by Elon Musk's SpaceX in a deal valued at $60 billion.

The transaction has turned the 25-year-old Indian-origin entrepreneur and his three co-founders into some of the technology industry's youngest billionaires. But the path to the deal began long before SpaceX entered the picture, with an attempt to answer a simple question about how artificial intelligence could change the work of software developers.

How Aman Sanger and his MIT co-founders built Cursor

Sanger founded Anysphere with Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif and Arvid Lunnemark, whom he met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The group initially explored several applications for artificial intelligence, including computer-aided design.

Their focus eventually shifted to software development.

At the time, AI tools were becoming increasingly useful to programmers, but using them often meant moving between a code editor and a separate chatbot. The founders saw an opportunity to bring artificial intelligence directly into the programming environment.

That idea became Cursor.

The platform was designed to do more than suggest individual lines of code. It could work with larger sections of a codebase, allowing developers to use natural-language instructions to generate, modify and troubleshoot software.

The approach helped position Cursor within the growing “vibe coding” movement, in which programmers increasingly describe what they want to build while AI handles a larger part of the technical process.

From an MIT experiment to a major AI company

The idea quickly found an audience as companies began adopting AI tools across their engineering operations.

According to Outlook Business, Cursor is now used by tens of thousands of teams, including engineering organisations at Nvidia, Adobe, Uber, Shopify and PayPal. The company has also said that its technology is used across 64% of Fortune 500 companies.

As Cursor's adoption expanded, so did Anysphere's valuation. The company raised $2.3 billion in a major funding round that valued it at approximately $29.3 billion.

For Aman Sanger, who now serves as Anysphere's chief operating officer, the company's rapid growth transformed an experiment among four young engineers into one of the most valuable businesses in AI software.

Before founding Anysphere, Sanger had worked at Bridgewater Associates and Google and had also explored AI through his own consulting venture. According to Outlook Business, his father, Arvind Sanger, is an IIT Bombay alumnus who later worked in the hedge fund industry, while his mother, Shilpa Sanger, is an orthodontist and entrepreneur.

How Cursor's growth attracted SpaceX

Cursor's rise eventually brought it into SpaceX's orbit.

The two companies had already begun working together before the acquisition. In April 2026, they announced a broader arrangement under which SpaceX had the option of acquiring Cursor for $60 billion or pursuing a $10 billion partnership instead.

SpaceX ultimately chose the acquisition.

According to a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing cited by Outlook Business, Anysphere will become a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX, while Cursor shareholders will receive SpaceX Class A stock based on the deal's implied $60 billion equity value.

The companies had also been working on a new AI model expected to have applications across Cursor and Grok, the AI chatbot developed by Musk's xAI.

This is where Sanger's journey from MIT connects directly with the $60 billion deal. The AI coding platform built by Anysphere had evolved into a product with an established user base, specialised technology and a role in Musk's wider artificial intelligence ambitions.

How much is Aman Sanger worth after the $60 billion deal?

According to Forbes, Sanger and his three co-founders each held roughly a 4.5% stake in Anysphere. At the $60 billion valuation, each stake would be worth approximately $2.7 billion, although the eventual value will depend on the transaction terms and the value of the SpaceX shares received.

Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive Capital are among the other major investors expected to benefit.

Founded in 2022, Anysphere reached a $60 billion valuation within four years. For Sanger, the journey from an MIT classroom to one of the largest deals in AI software reflects the speed with which Cursor moved from an idea about improving a programmer's workflow to a strategic asset for SpaceX.

The acquisition was not the result of a single moment. It was the culmination of the technology Sanger and his co-founders built, Cursor's rapid commercial growth and a partnership that ultimately gave Musk a reason to bring the company fully into his expanding AI ecosystem.