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Comment by greenoracle9

17 days ago

$60B is a huge price, but buying Cursor gives Musk something xAI has struggled to build: a popular coding product with real developer and enterprise adoption. It may be the fastest way to catch up in AI coding. The real question is whether SpaceX ownership improves Cursor or drives its users away.

> The real question is whether SpaceX ownership improves Cursor or drives its users away.

I know I'll sound hyperbolic but I'm deeply skeptical of the way anything Musk-owned is going to treat private data. I think he wouldn't hesitate to dig into it if it were to his benefit, even if there was an agreement against it. For that reason alone it makes Cursor look worse to me.

There's no way I will continue to use Cursor if it's Elon-owned. His actions at DOGE literally caused the deaths of thousands. We should all boycott.

> The real question is whether SpaceX ownership improves Cursor or drives its users away.

I can't speak for anyone else but I wont be renewing my sub. Funding anything Musk related isn't exactly high up on my list of desires, and theres ample alternatives out there.

  • Yeah, he’s so damn successful at building companies that elevate civilization. Wtf would anyone want to go with that.

    • > elevate civilization

      These companies have elevated himself. The entirety of civilization is an open question.

      The antipathy that many have towards Musk relates more to moral concerns centring on his plainly neo-nazi leanings. I don’t want one of his civilization-elevating cars, for example, because I don’t care to align, even tangentially, with abhorrent views.

My sense is that enterprises are extremely cautious. They like everything that is already common and hr friendly. They abhor anything that might be seen as divisive and controversial. That's why they're currently going with Anthropic and not Openai or Xai or anything Chinese. It's the smaller actors that are using everything but Anthropic. Anthropic got that safe enterprise bland vibe. The only pr trouble Anthropic is in is with saying no to the military, which just makes them even more enterprise safe. Meanwhile Sam Altman and Elon are out there freaking out the enterprises almost every day it seems like.

  • Fable got halted by US make it a moot point but none enterprise is happy about the forced (and unannounced) 30-day data rentention

    • To be fair, the retention is only for Fable. I agree though, I don't even use Claude at work, but I noped out of touching Fable when I read that.

i’m not interested in supporting a trillionaire with my money. i’ll be moving to vscode since the cost of switching is basically zero.

I think it'd be an enormous endorsement of Cursor/xAI and proof of improvement if SpaceX started using it to code the mission critical software running on Falcon 9. Which other AI company can say their models powered a rocket launch?

(mostly /s but I know I'd give it another look if it was that good)

  • > Which other AI company can say their models powered a rocket launch?

    Honestly, probably all of them. I imagine those coders are using all the tools they have available and are using Claude and ChatGPT as well as internal tools.

I can't imagine that any of the cautious companies or ones with their ear to the ground are going to want to cozy up to cursor with this acquisition; I'd suspect we'd see some exodus as well given the relationship to Musk.

Tesla was popular before Musk's ketamine fueled schizo-fascist phase. People will probably boycott Cursor as soon as he buys it...