Cursor-SpaceX deal turns $200K stake into $3B

Alameda Research bought roughly 5% of Anysphere, the developer of the coding tool Cursor, for about $200,000 in April 2022. The FTX bankruptcy estate sold that same stake in April 2023 for about $200,000. SpaceX has a deal giving it an option to acquire Cursor at a $60 billion valuation or, if it declines, to pay $10 billion for the partnership. At a $60 billion valuation, a 5% stake is worth about $3 billion, roughly 15,000 times the sale price.

Sam Bankman‑Fried, who is serving a prison sentence, has argued that the estate and its advisers sold assets too quickly and that forced liquidations reduced recoverable value. In February 2026 he posted projections suggesting FTX could have reached a net asset value of about $78 billion if asset prices had recovered instead of being sold under pressure.

Estate administrators sold assets under court supervision in 2023 to raise cash for customers and creditors. Administrators and creditors note that customer repayments were calculated using asset prices from late 2022; for example, a one Bitcoin repayment was based on Bitcoin’s roughly $16,800 price in November 2022.

Legal critics disputed SBF’s projections. Attorney John Deaton argued at the time that projected future values do not change the fact that customers lost money and that the court process addressed the facts available during the bankruptcy.

Family members of Bankman‑Fried have lobbied for a presidential pardon and have pointed to examples such as the Cursor stake to illustrate their claim that recoverable value was lost. Prediction markets currently assign a low probability-about 5%—to a presidential pardon for Bankman‑Fried.

The Cursor transaction has been cited by SBF and his supporters as an example of an asset that later appreciated after the estate sold it. The sale and subsequent valuation change are among post‑bankruptcy developments referenced in filings and public statements related to the FTX case.