OpenAI said Friday it will end its partnership with Cursor, the popular AI coding tool now owned by SpaceX, marking the latest escalation in the long-running dispute between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk. In a company blog post, OpenAI said it notified SpaceX of its intention to end the contract, proposing a closing date of Nov. 12, 2026, the maximum notification window allowed under the agreement. OpenAI framed the decision as a matter of trust. The company said it could not trust SpaceX to use its technology in accordance with OpenAI’s terms of service, citing what it described as a pattern of Musk’s companies violating contracts. Specifically, OpenAI’s post alleged that OpenAI added that its custom deal with Cursor only gave it a limited window to cancel following an ownership change, and said it wanted to preserve as much access as possible for developers in the meantime, calling the choice “incredibly difficult” given how widely it wants its models to be used. SpaceX completed its acquisition of Anysphere, the startup behind Cursor, earlier this month, following a deal announced in June. Mashable Light Speed Responding to Michael Truell, co-founder of Cursor and now an executive at SpaceX, took a more conciliatory tone, saying on X that the company was in talks with the OpenAI team to try to resolve the issue. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It may be loading or may have been deleted. Since the announcement, OpenAI competitor Anthropic, which has a current partnership with SpaceX, said it would increase computing support for its Claude models within Cursor. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It may be loading or may have been deleted. This is just the latest chapter in a dispute that has been simmering for years. Musk sued OpenAI and Altman for $150 billion over the company’s shift from its nonprofit roots; A federal jury ruled against him earlier this year, finding that he had applied too late. The fight has also played out repeatedly on social media, as Mashable reported. Altman reposted allegations that Musk’s companies failed to preserve key documents during the discovery and then returned Musk’s own catchphrase: “Troubling!” He later said he was “really excited” to depose Musk, calling it “Christmas in April.” Disclosure: Ziff Davis, the parent company of Mashable, filed a lawsuit in April 2025 against OpenAI, alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis’ copyrights by training and operating its artificial intelligence systems.
