Sources: Cursor was a top-five OpenAI customer at the start of 2026; OpenAI estimated in spring that Cursor would bring in $1B+ in annualized revenue for OpenAI (Maxwell Zeff/Wired)
OpenAI recently estimated its Cursor partnership would make more than $1 billion in revenue a year, WIRED has learned.
At the start of 2026, the AI coding editor Cursor was one of OpenAI's top five revenue-generating customers, bringing in over $1 billion in annualized revenue, according to sources familiar with the matter. OpenAI estimated this substantial revenue figure in the spring, based on their partnership's performance. However, the company decided to sever ties with Cursor, stating that they could not trust SpaceX to use their technology within its terms of service, given Musk's history of violating contracts.
OpenAI declined to comment on the financial implications of this decision, but the loss of a major customer like Cursor may not have as significant an impact as once expected, as the company generates more than $40 billion in annualized revenue from various sources, including subscriptions, ads in ChatGPT, and selling access to its AI coding tool, Codex.
Cursor founder and CEO Michael Truell maintained that OpenAI's models only account for about 5% of Cursor user traffic, suggesting the partnership might not be as vital as OpenAI believed. OpenAI's head of core products, Thibault Sottiaux, refuted this claim, emphasizing that token usage is not a reliable indicator of revenue or value created.
Truell's assertion implies that OpenAI's models were not highly popular with Cursor users, and thus, the decision to end the partnership might not substantially affect Cursor's business.
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