SpaceX doesn't waste any time developing rockets, launching satellites, or making big moves to build its AI business. Elon Musk's rocket company just completed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor.
The purchased company is essentially an AI software development tool. A user can tell Cursor to develop, say, a touch screen-based user interface. Then Cursor builds it. Users iterate with natural language commands.
Cursor also has AI agents that work on and correct software code on their own, among other product offerings. It competes with Microsoft's GitHub Copilot, Anthropic's Claude, and OpenAI's Codex, among others.
Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu laid out three benefits of the purchase in a Monday report. For starters, it kick-starts SpaceX's ability to monetize its AI business. Cursor is already earning revenue from many large companies.
SpaceX, of course, has found another way to monetize its AI computing capacity. It rents it to Anthropic and Alphabet's Google. Of course, SpaceX would like to sell its own AI solutions directly to customers, instead of hosting competitors.
Second, Cursor brings its own AI coding expertise to SpaceX. And third, it represents AI vertical integration. With the deal, SpaceX has computing power (data centers), frontier AI models (Grok), and AI applications (Cursor).
The acquisition, announced in June, was slated to close in the third quarter. It turned out to be in the middle of the third quarter, which is faster than Yu expected.
SpaceX always moves quickly. Musk wants to have 10 gigawatts of AI compute capacity installed by the end of 2027. SpaceX ended the second quarter with 1.4 gigawatts. It also wants to launch AI computers into orbit by 2028 using its huge, currently-in-development Starship rocket.
SpaceX has become a significant AI player in a flash. A year ago, the company was valued at roughly $400 billion. That was before the February 2026 merger with xAI, and before the record-setting June IPO. Now, SpaceX is a trillion-dollar company capable of buying billion-dollar companies.
Shares were down 1.7% in premarket trading at $143.74, while S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down 0.6% and 0.3%, respectively. Shares jumped 4.5% on Monday, partly helped by closing the Cursor acquisition on Aug. 14.
Yu rates SpaceX shares Buy. His price target is $235. He now models 2027 revenue of $115 billion, up from $97 billion before the deal closing.
The average analyst price target for SpaceX stock is $226, according to FactSet. The average 2027 revenue estimate is about $99 billion, up more than 100% from 2026 expectations for about $44 billion.
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