Cursor Brand Name May Not Survive SpaceX Acquisition

SpaceX’s acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor could be completed in the coming days.

That’s according to a report Friday (Aug. 9) from The Information, citing comments to staff at an all-hands meeting the day before. During that meeting, workers learned that the Cursor brand name would likely be phased out in the months to come, sources familiar with the matter said.

The report cited the example of Cursor’s upcoming general-purpose agent, known in-house by the code name “Sand,” and which could be renamed “Grok Bot” after SpaceX’s artificial intelligence chatbot.

Cursor has no plans to immediately change the name of its existing tools, such as its popular Cursor coding assistant, one source told The Information. The timing of the deal closing is contingent on securing regulatory approvals, though it is expected to conclude by the end of the month at the latest, the sources said.

According to the report, the branding discussion prompted questions from Cursor employees, wondering about the rationale behind using Grok’s branding. Cursor CEO Michael Truell had told staff earlier this year that SpaceXAI saw both Cursor’s brand and its enterprise customer relationships as important assets, the report added.

One source familiar with the discussions said the final branding decisions could change, and that SpaceX may decide on a new name altogether.

SpaceX and Cursor announced a partnership in April that gave the former company the option to acquire the latter. After going public in June, SpaceX said it would move forward with its $60 billion bid to purchase Cursor.

“For SpaceX, the price reflects what it costs to buy distribution it couldn’t build,” PYMNTS wrote about the deal earlier this summer.

“When SpaceX first announced the April deal in a post on social platform X, also owned by Musk, it framed the combination of Cursor’s product and customer base with its Colossus supercomputer infrastructure in Memphis, Tennessee, as the path to building ‘the world’s most useful [AI] models.’”

The Information report noted that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on a recent earnings call that the Cursor deal had cleared “almost all” regulatory hurdles and should close “quite soon.”

During the call, Musk took questions about the product roadmap for the new combined companies, but declined to provide details, pointing to the need to avoid “gun jumping.”

According to The Information, this was a reference to antitrust rules preventing merging companies from coordinating or working too closely before a deal becomes final.

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