Elon Musk is making a profession out of defying the market by making dangerous, outsized bets earlier than the remainder of the market wakes up and smells the espresso.
Musk is true so many occasions that arguing in opposition to him appears to change into a folly within the present market. Tesla (TSLA) helped redefine the electric-vehicle market. SpaceX grew to become the dominant pressure in business launches.
Following huge successes in such disparate industries, it turns into more durable and more durable to guess in opposition to Musk, as he has a behavior of proving critics mistaken.
However not each new guess will get judged on imaginative and prescient alone.
As new offers are struck, critics will scrutinize value, timing, and whether or not the chance stays contained or begins to bleed into the remainder of Musk’s more and more interconnected enterprise empire. That’s the reason a reported new deal involving SpaceX and AI coding startup Cursor is drawing a lot consideration.
SpaceX struck a deal, giving it the best to purchase Cursor for $60 billion later this yr or pay $10 billion to the corporate for the collaboration if a deal doesn’t happen, The New York Instances reported. The tieup additionally offers Cursor entry to SpaceX’s computing assets, together with Colossus, the supercomputer related to xAI.
On paper, the guess Musk is making seems sound. AI coding instruments are one of the vital vital battlegrounds in synthetic intelligence, and Cursor is actually making a reputation for itself on this vital space. Cursor stated in November 2025 that it raised $2.3 billion in a Collection D spherical at a $29.3 billion post-money valuation, CNBC famous.
With the quantity of capital raised thus far and the area of interest Cursor is serving, it comes as no shock that Tesla would desire a larger piece of this pie.
Nonetheless, the reported phrases additionally create a straightforward punching bag for critics.
SpaceX’s Cursor deal may look too wealthy too quick
The primary concern with the deal is valuation.
If SpaceX really has a path to purchase Cursor for $60 billion, that price ticket would place the potential deal’s valuation at greater than double the startup’s final disclosed valuation from only a few months in the past. Even by the requirements of the present AI increase, the deal could be very aggressive.
Supporters could make a compelling case for it. The attraction is apparent. Cursor brings distribution amongst critical builders, whereas SpaceX and xAI convey huge computing energy.
For instance that the partnership works out; it may assist Musk construct a stronger reply to rivals corresponding to Anthropic and OpenAI in one in every of AI’s most dynamic enterprises.
However that doesn’t imply buyers will let go of the value.
The deal construction itself could result in much more criticism. It is a type of “try before you buy,” which means that even these closest to the partnership really feel some uncertainty about how a lot Cursor is absolutely value and whether or not the strategic upside will fully come to fruition.
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That generates a well-known rigidity within the Musk-verse. The deal provides to Musk’s visionary repute. However the price ticket will deter most individuals. It could appear strategically pressing but additionally a matter of self-discipline.
And when these numbers get large enough, the market begins to marvel if ambition is outstripping the mathematics. That’s what makes this a novel progress story.
You have bought a startup with a sky-high valuation, a reported $60 billion buyout possibility and $10 billion fallback cost, the form of setup that just about begs the query of whether or not Musk is paying once more for velocity, relevance, and ecosystem management.
Tesla buyers might even see a well-known Elon Musk sample in Cursor deal
The second concern is not only value. It’s overlap.
The Cursor tieup will depend on Colossus infrastructure related to xAI, whereas SpaceX additionally explores a broader alliance involving Mistral and Cursor as Musk tries to tackle high AI rivals.
In different phrases, this isn’t a neatly remoted guess. It sits inside a bigger internet of Musk-linked firms, shared assets, and overlapping ambitions.
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Which will sound environment friendly to Tesla bulls. Nonetheless, it’d result in one thing messy for different folks.
A number of Musk firms share compute, expertise, and technique, which leads critics to usually ask the identical query: The place does one firm’s curiosity finish, and one other’s start?
That query is changing into more durable and more durable to disregard as Tesla buyers already digest Musk’s AI ambitions. In July 2025, Reuters reported that Musk stated Tesla shareholders would vote on whether or not Tesla ought to spend money on xAI, whilst a merger was dominated out.
Reuters later reported that Tesla had obtained a number of shareholder proposals associated to that doable funding.
Now layer that onto Tesla’s present spending image.
Tesla plans to spice up capital spending to greater than $25 billion in 2026, primarily for synthetic intelligence, Robotaxis, and humanoid robots, and expects to put up unfavorable free money move for the remainder of the yr, Reuters confirmed on April 23, 2026. The plan is already testing investor religion in unproven bets.
That context issues. Even when Tesla isn’t instantly shopping for Cursor, one other big Musk AI deal may nonetheless revive a well-known worry for shareholders: that formidable empire-building gambits generally tend to come back again to hang-out Tesla, by distraction, governance worries, or stress to prop up the broader ecosystem.
One other Musk moonshot? Tesla buyers could have motive to pause.
Picture by Josh Edelson on Getty Photos
Why Elon Musk’s Cursor guess may draw straightforward criticism
The very best protection of the deal is simple: Cursor is rising quickly, coding AI is strategically essential, and Musk has each incentive to pursue stronger merchandise if he needs xAI to meet up with rivals. It’s not a tough logic to grasp.
However the criticism is simply as straightforward to map out.
Key dangers critics may level to
- Valuation threat: A reported $60 billion purchase possibility far exceeds Cursor’s final disclosed $29.3 billion valuation, in keeping with Investopedia.
- Execution threat: A “try before you buy” construction will make buyers consider that the upside is simply not there for the buyers.
- Governance threat: The deeper the hyperlinks amongst SpaceX, xAI, and presumably Tesla, the extra underneath the scanner the whole lot will change into.
- Tesla spillover threat: Tesla is already growing spending on unproven AI initiatives, and shareholders could also be much less tolerant of one other big Musk-adjacent guess.
That’s the reason this story may resonate past SpaceX.
For bulls, it is a probably sensible transfer to lock in expertise, processing energy, and product momentum in one in every of AI’s hottest segments. To skeptics, it’d seem to be one thing else: yet one more richly priced Musk gamble by which buyers are requested to purchase into the grand plan earlier than the economics are absolutely seen.
And that’s the place the headline threat exists.
If the partnership works, Musk will look good once more. If it stumbles, critics can have a very good and simple goal: The worth seemed inflated, the empire overlap seemed messy, and the warning indicators had been there from the start.
In that sense, this isn’t only a Cursor story.
It’s a narrative about whether or not buyers nonetheless need to preserve underwriting Musk’s subsequent massive thought when the numbers are large and the buildings are difficult, and Tesla is already asking the marketplace for persistence on costly bets of its personal.
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