OpenAI said Friday, Aug. 28, that it notified SpaceX of its plan to wind down its contract with Cursor, with access scheduled to end Nov. 12, 2026. The company said it is giving Cursor the maximum notice allowed under its agreement.
The decision follows SpaceX’s $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, which closed Aug. 14. OpenAI said the move is based on concerns about whether SpaceX will comply with its terms of service, pointing to previous disputes involving Musk-controlled companies.
“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,” OpenAI said.
The company also said its agreement with Cursor gives it a limited period to cancel following a change in control. OpenAI will not supply upcoming models to Cursor during the transition, including its forthcoming Astra model.
Cursor has other options
The overall impact on Cursor could be limited, as Cursor CEO Michael Truell said OpenAI models account for about 5% of the platform’s user traffic. He also said the company is discussing the situation with OpenAI.
“Cursor was one of the very first users of OpenAI, we’ve worked closely with their team for years, and we’ve trusted their platform to be neutral infrastructure for our business,” Truell said.
Cursor supports models from several AI providers, including Anthropic, Google and SpaceXAI. SpaceXAI and Cursor also worked together on Grok 4.5, which launched in July. That gives Cursor a cushion that many single-model AI products do not have. Developers who specifically depend on OpenAI models, however, will have to switch models or change how they access OpenAI once the contract ends.
A bigger problem for developers
The more interesting issue here is not whether Cursor can replace OpenAI. It is how much control AI model providers retain over products built on top of their technology.
Developers may see Cursor as a single coding application, but its capabilities depend on contracts between Cursor and multiple model companies. A change in ownership can therefore alter which models are available without developers changing their own software.
The precedent is already familiar. Anthropic significantly reduced Windsurf’s direct access to Claude models in 2025 after reports that OpenAI planned to acquire the coding company. OpenAI’s move against Cursor shows that model access can work as commercial leverage in both directions.
Musk and Altman feud enters another arena
The decision also adds another chapter to the long-running fight between Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and left its board in 2018. He later sued OpenAI over its restructuring, but lost the case earlier this year and has said he plans to appeal.
Musk dismissed OpenAI’s latest decision on X, writing, “I couldn’t care less,” before attacking Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman.
For Cursor users, though, the personal feud matters less than the practical consequence: a major AI supplier is leaving the platform, and developers have roughly two months to decide whether OpenAI’s models are important enough to their workflows to warrant a change. For channel partners and enterprise customers, the dispute also highlights the risks of relying on AI products whose capabilities depend on contracts with third-party model providers.
Read more: SpaceX’s $60 billion Cursor acquisition brought Musk’s AI ambitions deeper into developer tools and set the stage for the latest dispute with OpenAI.