OpenAI Cuts Off Musk-Owned Cursor Over Contracts

OpenAI is ending its partnership with Cursor, the AI coding company SpaceX bought this month, saying it cannot trust an Elon Musk-owned firm to follow its rules.

The company said in a Friday night blog post that it will shut off Cursor's access to OpenAI models on November 12, 2026.

"We are making this choice because we cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk's companies violating contracts," OpenAI wrote, according to Reuters, Bloomberg and The Independent.

Musk answered on X early Saturday: "I couldn't care less."

Why OpenAI Says It Pulled the Plug

OpenAI did not accuse Cursor itself of breaking any terms, Business Insider reported. It pointed instead at Musk's other companies.

The blog post said X, formerly Twitter and now part of SpaceX, breached the terms of its contract with OpenAI after Musk bought the platform in 2022 — citing a New York Times report that Musk cut off OpenAI's access to Twitter data.

OpenAI also said Musk testified under oath earlier this year that his AI company xAI had violated OpenAI's terms by training its Grok model on OpenAI output. Musk said at the time that it was "partly" true that xAI had distilled OpenAI's models, The Verge reported in April.

"To work with a large partner like SpaceX, we typically rely on custom contracts to ensure compliance with our terms of service and that the integration provides for safety at scale," OpenAI said. The Cursor agreement, the company said, gave it a limited window to cancel after "a change of control."