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The reported SpaceX acquisition of Cursor has placed founders Aman Sanger and Sualeh Asif in the spotlight. The deal is expected to close by the third quarter of 2026, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Their journey from startup founders to potential multi-billionaires reflects the growing influence of AI-driven innovation in the global technology industry.
At just 25, Indian-origin entrepreneur Aman Sanger is making global headlines after Elon Musk's SpaceX agreed to acquire Cursor, the AI coding platform he co-founded, in a deal valued at $60 billion.
SpaceX is buying Cursor’s parent company, Anysphere, for $60 billion. As per reports, founders Aman Sanger and Sualeh Asif each own roughly a 4.5 percent stake in Anysphere. According to Forbes, Aman and Asif will each earn $2.7 billion with this buyout from SpaceX. It will make them billionaires overnight.
Born and raised in New York, Sanger comes from a family with Indian roots. His father, Arvind Sanger, is an IIT Bombay alumnus and hedge fund professional. His mother, Shilpa Sanger, is an orthodontist, entrepreneur and board member of education non-profit Pratham USA.
Aman began coding at 14 before going to MIT. At MIT, he met Asif, Truell, and Lunnemark, who went on to build Cursor with him. Reports state that Sanger and Truell were selected as Neo Scholars, a programme that connects promising technical talent with Silicon Valley founders and investors.
Asif, 28, who is Anysphere’s chief product officer, is originally from Karachi, Pakistan. He is a mathematics prodigy who represented Pakistan at the International Mathematical Olympiad for three straight years from 2016 to 2018, winning a bronze medal.
In 2022, the four founders launched Anysphere to build AI tools that could work directly within a programmer's workflow. After abandoning an early project focused on AI for computer-aided design, they shifted their attention to software engineering and created Cursor.
Unlike conventional coding assistants that mainly provide autocomplete suggestions, Cursor is designed to understand entire codebases, generate code, identify bugs, and assist developers with complex programming tasks.
The platform has since become one of the most widely used AI coding tools in the industry. Cursor says its software is used by more than 50,000 teams, including those at Nvidia, Adobe, Uber, Shopify, and PayPal. The company also claims that its products are used by 64% of Fortune 500 firms and generate more than 100 million lines of code daily for enterprise customers.
Cursor is also widely associated with popularizing ‘vibe coding’, a term that became one of the buzzwords of the AI era and was named Collins Dictionary's Word of the Year for 2025.
Also Read: Elon Musk Predicts SpaceX Will Generate $1 Trillion Revenue by 2030
The startup's rapid growth has attracted major investor interest. Last year, Cursor reached a valuation of $29.3 billion after raising funding from firms including Accel and Coatue. Reports have also pegged the company's annualized revenue at more than $1 billion.
The reported SpaceX-Cursor deal highlights the growing importance of AI-powered developer tools in the technology sector. It also reflects how major companies are investing heavily in AI talent and innovation to gain an edge in the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence market.
