The Subsidy Paradox: Why Cursor Sold to SpaceX
How a breakout tech company escaped the trap of training its biggest rivals.
In 30 Seconds
The Trap: Cursor, the leading AI-native developer interface, caught itself in a structural “subsidy paradox.” By relying on foundation models from OpenAI and Anthropic, Cursor inadvertently funded and trained its own direct competitors. Every enterprise keystroke acted as an inverted data siphon, helping incumbents build rival coding tools.
…
