ISLAMABAD: Elon Musk’s SpaceX has agreed to a $60 billion deal to buy Cursor, an AI coding startup co-founded by Pakistani-born Sualeh Asif.
The 26-year-old from Karachi started the San Francisco company in 2022. SpaceX said that the two companies are now working together, and it has the option to purchase Cursor later this year. The news comes as SpaceX gets ready to go public and after it took over Musk’s AI firm, xAI.
The agreement catapults the 26-year-old Pakistani native into the highest tier of Silicon Valley success stories.
SpaceXAI and @cursor_ai are now working closely together to create the world’s best coding and knowledge work AI.
The combination of Cursor’s leading product and distribution to expert software engineers with SpaceX’s million H100 equivalent Colossus training supercomputer will…
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 21, 2026
Terms of the agreement
SpaceX publicly announced on X that Cursor has granted the aerospace giant the contractual right to acquire the startup later this calendar year for a staggering $60 billion. In an alternative scenario where SpaceX opts against the purchase, the company will instead remit $10 billion for their joint development efforts.
“[The] combination of Cursor’s leading product and distribution to expert software engineers with SpaceX’s million H100 equivalent Colossus training supercomputer will allow us to build the world’s most useful models,” the company stated.
Key Points
- $60 billion agreement: SpaceX earns right to acquire Cursor later this year, with $10 billion fallback payment if deal collapses
- Forbes recognition: Named one of fastest-growing AI startups with over $1 billion in annualized revenue
- Karachi to MIT: Asif represented Pakistan at Math Olympiad, studied at Nixor College before MIT
- Massive adoption: Millions of developers at 50,000 enterprises including Nvidia, Adobe, Uber and Shopify
SpaceX said it has an agreement giving it the right to acquire artificial intelligence startup Cursor for $60 billion later this year or to pay $10 billion for the companies’ work together, part of the Elon Musk-run firm’s efforts to catch up with rivals in AI coding tools.… pic.twitter.com/GB0o4EYNd0
— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) April 22, 2026
From Karachi classrooms to MIT laboratories
Born and raised in Karachi, Sualeh Asif completed his A-Levels at Nixor College before gaining admission to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). During his teenage years, he proudly represented Pakistan at the International Math Olympiad for three consecutive years from 2016 to 2018.
While studying at MIT, Asif co-founded Anysphere, the parent company behind Cursor, alongside three of his university peers. He also launched an AI-powered search engine venture during his undergraduate years.
Meteoric financial trajectory
Cursor currently reports annualised revenue exceeding $1 billion, positioning it among the fastest-rising AI startups globally, according to Forbes.
The company had already achieved a $29.3 billion valuation in November 2025, following a $2.3 billion funding round co-steered by prominent venture capital firms Accel and Coatue.
Today, millions of software engineers across 50,000 enterprises, including industry giants Nvidia, Adobe, Uber, and Shopify, rely on Cursor to generate and refine blocks of computer code.
Finally the kind of role models Pakistani youth needs: Sualeh Arif.
Not property dealers, tax evaders, bank defaulters, rent seekers, born into wealth etc.
But a self-made kid from a middle-class family in Karachi. Studied at MIT, started a hugely impactful company, changed…
— Umar Saif (@umarsaif) April 23, 2026
Pakistani leadership takes notice
Former federal IT minister Umar Saif publicly commended Asif’s achievements, describing him as “the kind of role [model] Pakistani youth needs.”
“Not property dealers, tax evaders, bank defaulters, rent seekers, born into wealth etc. But a self-made kid from a middle-class family in Karachi,” Saif emphasised.
“Studied at MIT, started a hugely impactful company, changed the way people write code, now worth over $1 billion at the age of 26!”
Cursor joins OpenAI and Anthropic among a select group of Silicon Valley startups that have attracted massive developer interest by applying artificial intelligence to automate coding tasks, a sector where AI firms have discovered early commercial success, according to Reuters.
