These four kids from MIT were just offered $60 billion

These four kids from MIT were just offered $60 billion by SpaceX, a company they started three years ago. This is part four in our Charts & Crafts series on top private tech companies. To understand why Cursor is so valuable, you first have to understand code editors. The OG is Microsoft VSCode. Code editors are like a developer's home base, the tool where they write and manage lines of code all day long. Now, AI is good enough that most developers don't actually need to sit and type it out themselves. So Microsoft unveiled Copilot, which sits next to VS Code. It's a separate program that's like a super smart assistant sitting your shoulder and coding for you. Technically, that meant Copilot was an extension, a plugin. Plugins by design can only see what the developer chooses to show, whichever file they have open, but it can't see everything else. The Cursor team approached it differently. They took VSCode, literally the source code, which Microsoft made publicly available, and they forked it, made their own copy and put AI inside it. Not next to it. Their tool could see the entire codebase, every file, every function, every connection between them, and then you can build code inside it. Huge unlock. The developer growth year over year was crazy. From 30,000 users in 2023 to 500,000 in 2024, and over a million last year. The revenue growth followed suit, from a hundred million in revenue in 2024 to a billion last year, and projected to hit $6 billion by the end of this year. There's a pretty big problem though. Cursor runs on AI models made by the big guys, Anthropic and OpenAI, and both of these companies spent the entire last year building their own coding tools. Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex, competing directly with Cursor. The companies supplying Cursor's engine decided to build their own car. Cursor needed a model partner who wasn't also trying to eat their lunch. Enter SpaceX. SpaceX has xAI, a coding model that was already losing to Claude and ChatGPT, but they also have Colossus, a supercomputer with over a half million AI chips, which is like jet fuel for these. They also have a distribution platform, and most importantly, they have tons of cash. Cursor has the best product on the market with user adoption, real training data, and a talented team behind it together. Elon is betting they can become the number one coding tool. He put 60 billion on the table, but there's a little hair on it because of the upcoming equity. The downside is a $10 billion partnership if the deal doesn't go through, but the industry's still a buzz. Cursor is AI's Cinderella story this week. Which company on the list do you wanna see unpacked next?