OpenAI breaks off its partnership with Cursor after SpaceX's acquisition of the code editor

OpenAI has announced the end of its partnership with Cursor, the popular AI-assisted code editor, according to a thread posted on X by the account @thsottiaux (Tibo), who writes in the first-person plural ("we") on behalf of the company and is responding to an official @OpenAI tweet from August 29. OpenAI's original message states that the decision to end the partnership comes "following its acquisition by SpaceX" — that is, in the wake of SpaceX's acquisition of Cursor — although the available content offers no further details about that deal or its terms.

According to the thread, Cursor's direct access to OpenAI's models will cease to be available as of November 12, a deadline the company says it set in order to give developers time to plan the transition. The text itself sums up the underlying reason in a single word: "trust," without explaining in any greater detail how that trust broke down, since the OpenAI thread is cut off by a "Show more" and points to a blog post (openai.com/index/our-deci…) whose full content is not part of the material analyzed here.

As for alternatives, OpenAI lists several routes that it says will continue to work for those using its GPT models through Cursor: maintaining access via their own OpenAI API key, and continuing to use its models through the IDE extensions that OpenAI itself offers for Cursor. The company also says it will keep working with "the widest possible range" of development tools and environments ("harnesses"), both open and closed source, and reiterates its commitment to developers and to the tooling ecosystem in general, including its own open-source initiatives.

The announcement drew critical reactions from users quoted in the thread. One comment, from the account @growing_daniel, pokes fun at the situation ("Wow that's terrible. Sounds like it's time for another limit reset"), while another, from @ArcadianStill, directly challenges the "trust" argument put forward by OpenAI, calling the company "One of the least trustworthy companies on earth." These comments reflect the skepticism of part of the developer community toward the official justification given by OpenAI.

It is worth noting that the source of this story is a thread on X (formerly Twitter) rather than a full news article: much of OpenAI's original statement appears truncated in the available screenshot, and the link to the company's official blog, where the exact reasons and terms of the split are presumably spelled out, could not be consulted in full from the material provided. It is therefore not possible to confirm here any additional details about the aforementioned acquisition of Cursor by SpaceX, or about the specific "trust" concerns invoked, beyond what the quoted tweets literally state.