Pakistani-born founder’s AI startup draws $60 billion buyout option from SpaceX in high-stakes tech bet

Pakistani-born tech entrepreneur Sualeh Asif has emerged at the centre of one of Silicon Valley’s largest potential artificial intelligence deals after aerospace company SpaceX secured the right to acquire his startup, Cursor, for $60 billion later this year.

Under the agreement, SpaceX can either proceed with the full acquisition or pay $10 billion to formalise a strategic partnership, signalling the company’s deepening push into the rapidly expanding market for AI developer tools.

The move comes as SpaceX prepares for a highly anticipated public debut in the coming months, with the company reportedly targeting a valuation of about $1.75 trillion and seeking to raise roughly $75 billion in what could become one of the largest initial public offerings in history.

Industry observers say the arrangement is designed to strengthen the capabilities of xAI, the artificial intelligence venture behind the Grok chatbot, which was merged into SpaceX earlier this year. The partnership is expected to help the company compete more aggressively with rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have rapidly gained users by offering AI systems that automate software development tasks.

In a statement posted on social media, SpaceX said combining Cursor’s developer-focused platform with its large-scale computing infrastructure would accelerate the creation of more advanced AI models.

The company pointed to its Colossus training system in Memphis, described as a supercomputer cluster with computing capacity equivalent to one million H100 graphics processing units, as a key asset supporting the collaboration. SpaceX and xAI have been investing billions of dollars to expand AI infrastructure in recent years.

Cursor has experienced rapid commercial growth amid rising demand for automated coding solutions. The company reached a valuation of $29.3 billion in November 2025 after raising $2.3 billion from investors and reports annualised revenue exceeding $1 billion.

Asif, originally from Karachi, co-founded the startup with three fellow students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He represented Pakistan at the International Mathematical Olympiad from 2016 to 2018 and is estimated to have a net worth of approximately $1.3 billion.

Commenting on the development, Bilal bin Saqib said the achievement highlights the global potential of Pakistani talent while underscoring the need to build stronger innovation ecosystems at home.

Separately, two senior engineering leaders at Cursor, Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg, joined SpaceX earlier this year to contribute to the company’s lunar technology and artificial intelligence programmes.

Welcoming the move, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said future plans for orbital space centres and mass-driver systems on the Moon would represent a major step toward large-scale space industrial development.