OpenAI said it is terminating its contract with Cursor, a coding startup recently acquired by SpaceX, because it does not trust a company owned by Elon Musk to adhere to its terms of service.
The company said in a statement published Friday evening that it plans to shut down Cursor’s access to OpenAI models on November 12.
“This decision was incredibly difficult because we value our models being widely available to developers,” OpenAI said. “We are making this choice because we cannot trust SpaceX to use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk’s companies violating contracts.”
Spokespeople for SpaceX and OpenAI did not immediately return a request for comment.
OpenAI has not accused Cursor of violating any terms. Instead, it pointed to past behavior by another Musk-owned company, Twitter, which Musk bought in 2022 and earlier merged with SpaceX in February.
OpenAI said in its blog post that Twitter had previously violated the terms of its contract, citing a New York Times story that reported Musk had cut off OpenAI’s access to Twitter’s data. OpenAI also wrote that SpaceX’s CEO said under oath earlier this year that xAI had violated OpenAI’s terms by training Grok based on OpenAI’s output.
Musk said at the time that it was “partly” true that xAI had distilled OpenAI’s models, The Verge reported in April.
OpenAI said it uses “custom contracts” with major partners like SpaceX to ensure compliance. OpenAI’s partnership with Cursor provided a “limited time period” to cancel the agreement after the acquisition, the company said.
SpaceX has officially acquired Cursor this month for $60 billion. The deal gives the coding startup access to SpaceX’s computing power.
Cursor, an AI coding editoroffers models from several companies within its software, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and SpaceXAI. The website lists OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Luna, Sol, and Terra models that paid users can access through the software.
It is unclear which Cursor users or models will be affected by the shutdown. OpenAI said it will not supply “future models” to Cursor, including the upcoming Astra model.
The decision is the latest escalation in the long-running feud between the two parties Musk and Open AI.
In 2024, Musk, co-founder and early backer of OpenAI, sued the company, its CEO, Sam Altman, and others over its shift from a nonprofit research lab to a partially for-profit entity.
A federal jury ruled that in May Musk waited too long to bring forward the case, where the limitation period is missing.
Musk said he plans to appeal the decision.
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