OpenAI said late Friday it will cut off developers’ access to its models through Cursor, the AI coding platform that SpaceX completed acquiring earlier this month. The move escalates the long-running feud between Elon Musk and OpenAI’s leadership.
In an announcement, OpenAI said it is ending access because it “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.” The proposed shutoff date for OpenAI models via Cursor is Nov. 12, 2026, and OpenAI said it will not provide future models to Cursor as the agreement winds down.
Cursor CEO Michael Truell responded on X Friday night, saying OpenAI models serve about 5% of Cursor user traffic and that the company is “speaking with the OpenAI team to resolve this.” Truell noted Cursor was one of OpenAI’s earliest users and had trusted the platform to be neutral infrastructure.
SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor on Aug. 14, according to financial filings. Before SpaceX went public in June, it had acquired Musk’s X and xAI in February. Cursor and OpenAI did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
A feud years in the making
The decision is the latest chapter in an acrimonious dispute between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman. Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a non-profit research lab and helped fund it, but left the board in 2018 after disagreements over direction.
Musk responded Saturday on X, writing, “I couldn’t care less,” while calling Altman and Brockman “utterly untrustworthy” and repeating his claim that they “stole an open source nonprofit.”
Musk sued OpenAI, Altman and Brockman in 2024, arguing the company’s restructuring into a for-profit with a non-profit parent violated its founding commitments. He lost the lawsuit earlier this year but has vowed to appeal.
OpenAI has disputed Musk’s claims. Since Musk left, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, partnered with Microsoft, and raised massive funding as it prepares for a possible public offering next year.
Not the first model cutoff
OpenAI’s move is not unprecedented in the competitive AI coding market. Last June, Anthropic — which is now partnering with SpaceX and renting compute from Musk’s company — blocked Windsurf’s access to its Claude models.
Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown wrote Friday night that Cursor has been a trusted partner since Sonnet 3.5 and that Anthropic will continue increasing compute to support Claude models in Cursor, saying “we’re excited for what comes next with them at SpaceX.”
Some tech executives criticized Brown’s response, with Replit CEO Amjad Masad pointing out Anthropic’s history with Windsurf and Docker executive Mat Velloso replying that it was “a great opportunity to stay quiet.”
The clash comes as the market for AI-assisted coding tools heats up. OpenAI is poised to go public next year, while rival Anthropic has held preliminary IPO talks with bankers at a valuation that could reach $2 trillion, according to CNBC.
Source: www.cnbc.com — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/29/openai-cursor-spacex-model-access.html
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