OpenAI's decision to cut off Cursor supply triggers a reshuffling of the programming AI landscape: a feud between giants becomes the catalyst, and Anthropic ramps up its computing power to grab market share.

The long-standing feud between OpenAI and Elon Musk has escalated again. The developer of ChatGPT announced it will terminate its AI model services to the programming tool Cursor, citing its inability to trust SpaceX to comply with its terms of service.

On August 30, OpenAI issued a public statement saying that, based on the existing record of Musk's companies breaching contracts, the company has notified SpaceX to terminate the cooperation and proposed to officially shut down the service on November 12, the latest deadline allowed by the contract.

Cursor was acquired by SpaceX for $60 billion in June of this year, and currently OpenAI models handle about 5% of its traffic.

The decision stems from a protracted public standoff. The conflict between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has escalated from a social media war of words to a federal court lawsuit. In May, a jury dismissed Musk's claims on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired, but the rift between the two has not been healed.

Musk responded that day by saying he "didn't care" and again accused Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman of being "untrustworthy".

OpenAI: Citing previous examples of Musk's company defaulting

In its statement, OpenAI explicitly attributed the decision to terminate the partnership to Musk's past behavior.

The company stated that it breached OpenAI's contractual terms after Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, renamed it X, and later merged it into SpaceX, but the statement did not specify the details of the breach. OpenAI stated:

We made this decision because, based on the history of Musk's companies breaching contracts, we cannot be certain that SpaceX will use our technology within the scope of our terms of service.

This statement essentially links the commercial contract dispute directly to the personal feud between the two individuals that has lasted for years, a wording rarely seen in announcements of the termination of collaborations in the technology industry.

Cursor: Limited impact, Anthropic quickly fills the gap.

For Cursor, the actual impact of this incident may be relatively controllable.

On August 28, Cursor co-founder Michael Truell stated on the X platform that OpenAI models currently account for only about 5% of Cursor's traffic, and the company is communicating with the OpenAI team to seek solutions.

Meanwhile, alternatives have quickly emerged. Anthropic co-founder and chief computing officer Tom Brown responded on the X platform the same day, stating that Anthropic has a partnership with SpaceX and will increase computing power to support the deployment of the Claude model in the Cursor.

This means that even if OpenAI cuts off supplies as scheduled on November 12, Cursor still has a feasible path to switch to the Claude model at the technical level, and the continuity of user services is not expected to be fundamentally affected.

Musk and OpenAI: From Founder to Court Opponent

This business dispute is rooted in a broken founding relationship.

Musk was a co-founder and board member of OpenAI, but left in 2018. The ensuing feud between the two sides deepened, culminating in a court battle in 2024.

In his lawsuit, Musk accused Altman and Brockman of deviating from OpenAI's founding principles as an open-source charity to benefit humanity, and accused the two of defrauding him of $38 million in donations. He also criticized Microsoft's intervention and efforts to purge dissenting directors when Altman was fired and then returned to the CEO position in 2023.

Musk wrote in the lawsuit:

The company structure, originally designed as a system of checks and balances between the non-profit division, the for-profit division, the board of directors, and the CEO, collapsed completely overnight.

Altman countered in a trial in Oakland, California federal court that Musk's decision to leave and found a for-profit competitor, xAI, after his attempt to control OpenAI failed, was the real departure from his original mission.

On May 18th of this year, the jury ruled that Musk's claim was time-barred, and Musk lost the case.

OpenAI's decision to terminate its Cursor partnership demonstrates that even with the legal proceedings concluded, the commercial barriers between the two companies continue to strengthen.

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