OpenAI Cut Off a Billion-Dollar Customer to Avoid Elon Musk

In a late-night blog post last Friday, OpenAI said it would wind down its partnership with Cursor, the startup behind one of the most popular AI coding tools on the market. The reason OpenAI gave for the decision is effectively that it can’t trust Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX recently acquired Cursor in a $60 billion deal.

In doing so, OpenAI walked away from one of its most important customers. Cursor has long paid OpenAI fees to offer the ChatGPT-maker’s models to developers using its AI coding editor. At the start of 2026, Cursor was one of OpenAI’s top five customers in terms of revenue, people familiar with the matter tell WIRED. By the spring of this year, OpenAI estimated Cursor would bring in more than $1 billion in annualized revenue for the ChatGPT maker, based on the partnership’s performance at that time, the people said.

The figures, which have not been previously reported, indicate the financial loss OpenAI is willing to take on to avoid doing business with Musk. OpenAI declined to comment. Representatives for SpaceX and Cursor did not immediately respond to WIRED's request for comment.

“We are making this choice because we cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk's companies violating contracts,” said OpenAI in the blog post.