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SpaceX's statement to get AI coding startup Cursor astatine a $60 cardinal valuation has retroactively turned a regular bankruptcy plus merchantability by FTX's property into 1 of the largest missed recoveries successful crypto history.
Updated Apr 23, 2026, 6:24 a.m. Published Apr 23, 2026, 6:18 a.m.
A 5% involvement successful AI coding startup Cursor that FTX's bankruptcy property sold for $200,000 successful April 2023 would beryllium worthy astir $3 cardinal today, pursuing SpaceX's statement this week to get the institution astatine a $60 cardinal valuation.
SpaceX said Monday it has the close to bargain Cursor aboriginal this twelvemonth for $60 cardinal oregon to wage $10 cardinal if the afloat acquisition does not proceed. The woody is laminitis Elon Musk's move to adjacent the gap with OpenAI and Anthropic connected AI coding tools, an country wherever helium precocious said xAI, the Musk-run AI institution that merged with SpaceX, is down competitors.
SpaceX is holding disconnected connected contiguous acquisition due to the fact that of its planned archetypal nationalist offering targeting a $2 trillion valuation, with the $10 cardinal serving arsenic a breakup fee.
The crypto space sits successful the headdress table. In April 2022, Alameda Research, the trading steadfast founded by Sam Bankman-Fried and tally alongside FTX, invested $200,000 successful Anysphere, the institution that builds Cursor.
That concern bought astir 5% of the institution astatine a $4 cardinal valuation. One twelvemonth aboriginal FTX had collapsed, Alameda and FTX were successful bankruptcy, and the court-appointed property sold the Cursor involvement for the aforesaid $200,000 Alameda had paid.
The involvement is worthy $3 cardinal astatine SpaceX's $60 cardinal terms tag, meaning the spread betwixt what the FTX property received and what the presumption would fetch contiguous is astir a 15,000x return. It was alternatively realized by whoever bought it from the bankruptcy alternatively than the creditors the property was expected to beryllium maximizing betterment for.
The timing cuts awkwardly for FTX's bankruptcy administration.
Bankman-Fried, presently serving a 25-year national sentence, has spent the past twelvemonth arguing from situation that FTX's property destroyed billions successful value by liquidating assets excessively rapidly during the bankruptcy, and that customers could person been made much than full if the process had held positions alternatively of selling them into what turned retired to beryllium the bottommost of crypto prices.
In February, helium shared a projection suggesting FTX's nett plus worth would person reached $78 cardinal if the property had held assets done the consequent betterment alternatively than selling successful 2023 and 2024.
Cursor launched its AI coding merchandise successful aboriginal 2023, the aforesaid twelvemonth the property sold the stake, and the company's trajectory from that motorboat to its existent valuation 3 years aboriginal is among the steepest successful bundle startup history.
FTX customers person since been made full successful dollar presumption nether the bankruptcy's organisation plan, receiving backmost their assertion values positive interest. What they did not person is the upside from what those assets became betwixt the bankruptcy filing and now, which successful the lawsuit of the Cursor involvement unsocial represents astir $3 cardinal of forgone betterment against $200,000 realized.
Bankman-Fried's parents person publically advocated for a pardon, appearing connected CNN in March arguing that FTX customers were yet repaid and that the lawsuit against their lad should beryllium revisited. The Cursor fig is apt to diagnostic prominently successful the family's continued campaign, and successful Bankman-Fried's ain letters from prison, arsenic the azygous clearest illustration of the benignant of worth helium claims the property destroyed done forced selling.
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