SpaceX hints at $60 billion buy of coding startup with Pakistani co-founder

An AI coding startup co-founded by a Pakistani-born entrepreneur has struck a $60 billion acquisition agreement with SpaceX, marking one of the largest deals yet in the rapidly expanding artificial intelligence sector.

Cursor, developed by startup Anysphere, is part of a new wave of Silicon Valley firms — alongside companies like OpenAI and Anthropic — that are attracting developers by using AI to automate software coding, as Pakistani media outlets highlight. 

SpaceX said in a post on X that Cursor had granted it the option to acquire the company later this year for $60 billion. If the acquisition does not go ahead, SpaceX will instead pay $10 billion for the companies’ collaboration.

“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 said.

From Karachi to Silicon Valley

Cursor was co-founded by Sualeh Asif, who grew up in Karachi and attended Nixor College in his hometown before studying at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. He also represented Pakistan at the International Mathematical Olympiad between 2016 and 2018.

While at MIT, he co-founded Anysphere with three fellow students, developing Cursor into one of the most widely used AI-powered coding tools.

The company now reports more than $1 billion in annualised revenue, making it one of the fastest-growing AI startups.

Cursor reached a valuation of $29.3 billion in November 2025 after raising $2.3 billion in a funding round co-led by venture capital firms Accel and Coatue.

Its tools are now used by millions of developers across roughly 50,000 companies, including Nvidia, Adobe, Uber and Shopify.

The deal has also drawn praise in Pakistan, with former IT minister Umar Saif describing the co-founder 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. Studied at MIT, started a hugely impactful company, changed the way people write code, now worth over $1 billion at the age of 26!” he boasted on LinkedIn.

By Nazrin Sadigova