OpenAI is ending its contract with the AI coding tool Cursor after SpaceX acquired the company, saying that Elon Musk's companies have repeatedly broken contracts.
OpenAI announced that it will terminate its contract with Cursor effective November 12, 2026. According to the company, this is the maximum notice period allowed under the contract, which includes a clause giving OpenAI a limited window to end the agreement after a change in ownership. SpaceX's acquisition of Cursor triggered the move. OpenAI now says it can't be confident that SpaceX will follow the terms of service.
"It boils down to trust," OpenAI's Thibault Sottiaux says. Users who access GPT models through Cursor will still be able to use their own OpenAI API keys, and OpenAI will continue to provide access through its IDE extensions for Cursor. Sottiaux goes out of his way to signal that this is a specific move against Musk, not against the broader AI coding tool landscape and its developer community.
Musk's companies have a track record of breaking contracts, OpenAI says
The suspension is the latest chapter in a years-long feud between Musk and OpenAI that has also played out in court. OpenAI specifically accuses Musk of breaching contracts after his acquisition of Twitter and of trying to extract data. The AI lab had a licensing deal with Twitter that gave the company access to the full tweet data feed for about $2 million a year to train ChatGPT. When Musk found out about the agreement in December 2022, he thought the price was too low and cut off OpenAI's access.
