SpaceX announced on June 16 in a social media post that it exercised an option to acquire Cursor in an all-stock transaction valued at $60 billion.
Cursor is a four-year-old San Francisco-based firm that has created an AI coding platform that it claims debugs faster and ships cleaner code.
SpaceX, which became a publicly traded company last week, plans to fold Cursor into its X67 Inc. unit. The deal was first announced in April, when SpaceX said it would “pay $10 billion for our work together” if it didn’t exercise the option.
Gibson Dunn advised SpaceX on the deal with an international team led by Robert Little in Dallas and George Sampas in New York.
The team also includes James Springer in Washington, D.C., Chris Trester in Palo Alto and Michelle Gourley in Orange County. The firm’s capital markets team that advised on the deal is led by Houston partners Hillary Holmes, Harrison Tucker and Atma Kabad.
Gina Hancock, Josh Barringerand Michael Cannon advised from Dallas. Other Gibson lawyers include Jessica Um (New York), Josh Lipton (Washington, D.C.), Attila Borsos (Brussels), Alana Tinkler (London) and Josh Sidi (New York).
Tina Soppitt has been Cursor’s general counsel since September after more than seven years in the GC office at Reddit. Kirkland & Ellis advised Cursor with a team that included Julian Seiguer, who works from Houston and Austin. New York partners Sarkis Jebejian, Keri Schick Norton and Steven Choi also advised.
Kirkland associates in Texas who also worked on the deal include Hayley Haggard from Austin with Brooke Curry, Robbie Dillard and Andrea Bucher in Houston. Anthony Sanderson, a partner who works in Washington, D.C., and Houston, and partner Scott D. Price, who has an office in Austin and New York, also provided counsel.
Cursor shareholders will get the right to receive common shares of SpaceX based on an implied equity value of Cursor of $60 billion. The companies expect the deal to close in the third quarter.
SpaceX said in the social media post that the companies have been jointly training an AI model that “will be released in Cursor and Grok Build soon.”
Hunton Andrews Kurth advised SpaceX on Texas law and corporate governance matters with a team led by Daryl Robertson in Houston and Rob Smith in Washington, D.C.
Other Hunton lawyers include Steven M. Haas (New York/Richmond), Joanna D. Enns (Dallas), Mike O’Leary (Houston), Ashley Kahn (Hosuton), John Schronce (Richmond), Geoffrey Fehling (Boston/Washington D.C.), Kathleen Dill (Houston) and Adrianna Culbreth (Houston).