On August 29, OpenAI announced it will stop providing models to Cursor, the AI coding editor, effective November 12. The move came two weeks after SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor's parent company Anysphere.
The stated reason
OpenAI said it "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." The company pointed to two examples: Twitter (now part of SpaceX) breaking a $2 million annual data deal after Musk acquired it, and xAI using OpenAI outputs to train its own models—something Musk called "partly" true under oath.
What developers lose
Cursor CEO Michael Truell said OpenAI models serve roughly 5% of Cursor's traffic. Anthropic immediately pledged to increase Claude support. Cursor has also built Composer 2.5, its own coding model, reducing reliance on external providers. OpenAI gave the maximum contractual notice—75 days—and will not provide new models during the wind-down.
Why the math matters
Over 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI. Cursor had revenue-sharing deals with multiple frontier labs. SpaceX rents compute to Anthropic while owning a major Claude distribution channel. The feud is real, but the dependency question cuts both ways: when your editor needs permission from three rival labs to function, you are renting the factory floor.