OpenAI announced late Friday that it will cease providing its AI models to Cursor, the coding tool company now owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. This move intensifies the ongoing rivalry between OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, and Musk.
The conflict between Musk and Altman has been brewing for years, peaking earlier this year with a trial concerning Musk’s $150 billion lawsuit against OpenAI. During the proceedings, Musk’s lawyer claimed that witnesses, including Musk himself, had labeled Altman a liar, while OpenAI contended that Musk was trying to take control of the company.
OpenAI explained its decision in a blog post, stating, “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.”
Musk took to X on Saturday morning, responding with, “I couldn’t care less.” He accused Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman of being “untrustworthy” and reiterated his claim that they “stole an open source nonprofit.”
The world’s richest individual had previously sued OpenAI and Altman, arguing that they betrayed the original nonprofit mission of the organization for personal gain. However, a federal jury ruled against Musk earlier this year, deciding that his lawsuit was filed too late.
Meanwhile, Michael Truell, a co-founder of Cursor and now an executive at SpaceX, mentioned on X that the company is in talks with the OpenAI team to resolve the issue.
Following OpenAI’s announcement, the competing company Anthropic revealed its plans to boost compute resources for the Claude models in Cursor, as stated by co-founder Tom Brown.
OpenAI’s blog also noted that X, which was formerly known as Twitter and is now under Musk’s ownership, breached its contract with OpenAI after the acquisition.
The AI company further explained that collaborations with major partners like SpaceX usually require custom contracts to ensure compliance with service terms and to maintain scalability and safety during integration.
In the same blog post, OpenAI suggested a cutoff date of November 12 and stated that its agreement with Cursor had a limited timeframe for contract cancellation following “a change of control.”
SpaceX had announced a $60 billion all-stock deal to acquire Anysphere, the startup behind Cursor, in June, completing the acquisition earlier this month.
