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Elon Musk ally and investor Jason Calacanis says SpaceX's $60 billion acquisition of Cursor could become the best tech deal since Instagram and YouTube, but the AI coding startup still has a long way to go before matching the impact of those legendary acquisitions.
The All-In podcast co-host said on X that Cursor's growth trajectory and access to SpaceX's computing infrastructure could boost its position in the AI coding space: "At this pace, @cursor_ai will be the number one or two coding agent in a year." He called it the “best acquisition since Instagram and YouTube” and said it has a "very impressive squad... now with unlimited compute behind them."
SpaceX said on Tuesday that it would acquire Anysphere, the company behind AI coding platform Cursor, in a $60 billion all-stock deal. The acquisition gives Cursor access to SpaceX's Colossus data centers and provides SpaceX with one of the fastest-growing AI software businesses in the market. Cursor recently hit a $4 billion annualized revenue run rate, up from $3 billion in April.
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The deal also strengthens SpaceX's position in enterprise AI and coding tools, while giving Grok access to valuable developer workflows, coding requests and design decisions.
Calacanis has been publicly bullish on a SpaceX-Cursor deal since April, when he said that a transaction was inevitable. "So, I think it's fait accompli that this deal is going to get done," he said on an episode of the All-In podcast.
At the time, Calacanis called Cursor a "money-printing machine" and pointed to its rapid growth trajectory. "They expect to end 2026 with a $6 billion rate. They're going to triple it," he said.
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For Calacanis, however, the real attraction was SpaceX's computing infrastructure. "The key part of the story here is that Elon has 550,000 GPUs in Colossus," he said, adding that access to compute had become one of Cursor's biggest constraints.
He summed up the deal as "peanut butter and chocolate" and predicted the acquisition could reshape the AI coding market. "If you put these two together, I predict that this is going to move SpaceX, xAI and Cursor to the front of the coding leaderboard within 12 months."
Calacanis' comparison invokes two of the most successful acquisitions in tech history. Instagram, which Meta Platforms acquired for $1 billion in 2012, generated $32 billion in U.S. advertising revenue in 2025, accounting for half of the company's U.S. ad revenue, according to Bloomberg, which cited research firm eMarketer. Meanwhile, Alphabet acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006. According to Alphabet's latest annual results, YouTube generated over $60 billion in revenue during 2025 across advertising and subscriptions.
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At $4 billion in annualized revenue, Cursor is already meaningful relative to SpaceX's existing business. SpaceX generated $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025, meaning Cursor's current run rate already represents about 21% of SpaceX's annual sales.
However, matching the impact of Instagram or YouTube would require substantially more growth. Using current revenue figures as a benchmark, Cursor would need to grow eightfold to reach Instagram's estimated $32 billion in annual revenue. On the other hand, to approach YouTube's current scale, it would need to expand about 15x from today's level to over $60 billion in annual revenue.
On Stocktwits, retail sentiment was 'bullish' on SpaceX (SPCX) amid 'extremely high' message volume, while Meta (META) drew 'bearish' sentiment and Alphabet (GOOGL) saw 'neutral' sentiment, both with 'normal' message volume.
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So far this year, META is down 9%, making it the “Magnificent Seven's” third-worst performer, while GOOGL has climbed 19% to lead the group.
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