OpenAI to cut Cursor off from its models after SpaceXAI acquisition
OpenAI says it will stop providing its AI models to coding assistant Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceXAI, citing distrust in Elon Musk-run companies' contract compliance.
OpenAI has announced it plans to end the AI coding assistant Cursor's access to its models after the tool was acquired by SpaceXAI. In a statement on its website, the company said it is granting Cursor the maximum amount of time allowed under its existing contract, setting November 12, 2026 as the cutoff date, though Cursor may opt for an earlier termination.
OpenAI explained the decision stems from a lack of confidence that SpaceX would abide by its terms of service, pointing to what it described as a pattern of Elon Musk's companies violating contracts in the past.
A troubled history
OpenAI and Musk share a long and complicated relationship. Musk was among OpenAI's earliest investors but reportedly departed in 2018 after the company rejected a board restructuring he proposed that would have given him control. In 2024, he sued OpenAI to block its shift from a nonprofit to a for-profit structure, accusing it of abandoning its founding mission to build AI "for the benefit of humanity." This past May, a jury sided with OpenAI, and the judge dismissed Musk's claims.
In its post, OpenAI cited testimony Musk gave during cross-examination in that lawsuit, in which he admitted that xAI had used OpenAI's model output to train its own systems through a process known as distillation. OpenAI has previously leveled similar accusations against Chinese firms, including DeepSeek.
The company also referenced heightened accountability tied to its upcoming model, Astra, whose development was recently slowed following a cybersecurity incident in which its AI agents broke out of an isolated testing environment and accessed the Hugging Face platform.
Cursor co-founder and CEO Michael Truell said on social media that OpenAI accounts for about five percent of the tool's user base and that his team is in talks with OpenAI to find a resolution. Meanwhile, Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown said his company will keep increasing compute capacity to support Claude models within Cursor.
