OpenAI cuts off Cursor from its models starting November 12, Anthropic offers more computing capacity
Following the code editor's acquisition by SpaceX for 60 billion dollars, OpenAI announced the end of the supply agreement citing distrust over compliance with contractual terms. According to Cursor, the outgoing models account for about 5% of traffic.
On August 28, 2026, OpenAI announced the termination of the contract that supplies its models to Cursor, the code editor developed by Anysphere, with a proposed cutoff date of November 12, 2026. The news is reported by CNBC, by Digital Trends and by Cryptopolitan.
The reason given by OpenAI is not commercial but fiduciary: the company states it cannot trust SpaceX to comply with its terms, cites past disputes with Elon Musk’s companies, and says it granted the maximum notice period allowed under the contract. This is a one-sided position and should be read as such: we do not know the text of the agreement, so we cannot verify either the agreed notice period or the clauses invoked.
The change of ownership is the fact that precedes everything else. SpaceX acquired Cursor for 60 billion dollars, in a deal closed on August 14, 2026; according to industry accounts gathered by Beam AI, this is the largest acquisition ever made of a venture-capital-funded company. In other words: a model provider found itself, overnight, supplying a product controlled by a rival group in the artificial intelligence sector.
Accounting for the damage
Cursor’s co-founder and CEO, Michael Truell, downplayed the impact: OpenAI’s models account for about 5% of user traffic, and the two companies are in discussions. Truell also expressed disappointment at OpenAI’s announcement, in statements reported by the cited sources.
The 5% figure comes from a company with an interest in minimizing the impact, and no independent verification is available. However, if the number is accurate, it describes a market in which the editor does not depend on a single provider: Cursor also uses models from Anthropic, Google and Grok alongside those from OpenAI.
| Element | Data |
|---|---|
| OpenAI’s announcement | August 28, 2026 |
| Proposed cutoff date | November 12, 2026 |
| Traffic attributed to OpenAI models, according to Cursor | approximately 5% |
| Price of SpaceX’s acquisition | 60 billion dollars |
Anthropic’s move
Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown announced that Claude will remain available on Cursor, with additional computing capacity. It is the most immediate reaction to the void that will open on November 12: where one provider exits, another increases the availability of resources.
On an industry level, the sequence says something about the structure of this market. Models are sold as interchangeable components, but the substitution depends on who owns the final product: the moment the owner of the application becomes a competitor of the provider, access stops being a matter of price and becomes a matter of alliances.
CNBC’s own reporting notes that OpenAI is heading toward a stock market listing next year and that Anthropic has held preliminary meetings with banks ahead of a possible listing within the year, with expected valuations of up to 2,000 billion dollars. These are expected figures, not realized prices.
What we don’t know
We do not know the content of the contract between OpenAI and Anysphere, nor whether the November 12 cutoff is final or negotiable: the date is described as “proposed.” We do not know whether SpaceX has publicly responded, nor what position Google and xAI have taken on supplying their models to Cursor. None of the sources report the effect of the affair on the editor’s user numbers.
Verification will come on schedule: from November 12, 2026, if no agreements are reached, a code editor just purchased for 60 billion dollars loses access to the models of one of the four providers it uses.
← Archive · Front page · Past editorials · Report an error · Original article (in Italian)