OpenAI Cut Off a Billion-Dollar Customer to Avoid Elon Musk
OpenAI Cut Off a Billion-Dollar Customer to Avoid Elon Musk
OpenAI 为了避开埃隆·马斯克，切断了一位十亿美元级客户
In a late-night blog post last Friday, OpenAI said it would wind down its partnership with Cursor, the startup behind one of the most popular AI coding tools on the market. The reason OpenAI gave for the decision is effectively that it can’t trust Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX recently acquired Cursor in a $60 billion deal.
上周五深夜，OpenAI 在一篇博客文章中宣布，将终止与 Cursor 的合作关系。Cursor 是一家初创公司，其开发的 AI 编程工具是目前市场上最受欢迎的产品之一。OpenAI 给出的理由归根结底是无法信任埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk），而马斯克旗下的 SpaceX 公司近期以 600 亿美元的价格收购了 Cursor。
In doing so, OpenAI walked away from one of its most important customers. Cursor has long paid OpenAI fees to offer the ChatGPT-maker’s models to developers using its AI coding editor. At the start of 2026, Cursor was one of OpenAI’s top five customers in terms of revenue, people familiar with the matter tell WIRED. By the spring of this year, OpenAI estimated Cursor would bring in more than $1 billion in annualized revenue for the ChatGPT maker, based on the partnership’s performance at that time, the people said.
此举意味着 OpenAI 放弃了其最重要的客户之一。长期以来，Cursor 一直向 OpenAI 支付费用，以便为其 AI 代码编辑器的开发者提供 ChatGPT 开发商的模型。据知情人士向《连线》（WIRED）透露，截至 2026 年初，Cursor 是 OpenAI 营收排名前五的客户之一。知情人士称，根据当时合作的表现，OpenAI 预计 Cursor 将为公司带来超过 10 亿美元的年化收入。
The figures, which have not been previously reported, indicate the financial loss OpenAI is willing to take on to avoid doing business with Musk. OpenAI declined to comment. Representatives for SpaceX and Cursor did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
这些此前未被报道的数据表明，为了避免与马斯克做生意，OpenAI 愿意承担巨大的经济损失。OpenAI 拒绝置评。SpaceX 和 Cursor 的代表未立即回应《连线》的置评请求。
“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,” said OpenAI in the blog post.
OpenAI 在博客中表示：“我们做出这一选择是因为，基于埃隆·马斯克旗下公司违反合同的过往经验，我们无法确信 SpaceX 会在我们的服务条款范围内使用我们的技术。”
As OpenAI prepares to go public next year, it’s trying to show investors a more stable business—ideally one that doesn’t rely so heavily on the goodwill of Musk. OpenAI reportedly now generates more than $40 billion in annualized revenue, drawing on several different lines of business, including subscriptions, ads in ChatGPT, and selling access to its AI coding tool, Codex.
随着 OpenAI 准备在明年上市，它正试图向投资者展示一个更稳定的业务——理想情况下，这个业务不应过度依赖马斯克的善意。据报道，OpenAI 目前的年化收入已超过 400 亿美元，业务来源多元，包括订阅服务、ChatGPT 中的广告，以及出售其 AI 编程工具 Codex 的访问权限。
Losing a major customer like Cursor may not hurt OpenAI financially as much as it once would have, but it was certainly a difficult decision. The company acknowledged in its blog post that ending the partnership may damage its standing with developers—a community it has spent years carefully working to win over—by cutting off a major channel they use to access OpenAI’s models.
失去 Cursor 这样的大客户在财务上可能不像过去那样对 OpenAI 造成重创，但这无疑是一个艰难的决定。该公司在博客中承认，终止合作可能会损害其在开发者群体中的地位——这是它多年来精心经营的社区——因为它切断了开发者访问 OpenAI 模型的一个主要渠道。
Michael Truell, Cursor’s founder and CEO, who is now leading teams at SpaceX, responded publicly to OpenAI’s announcement hours later on Friday in a post on X, claiming that the ChatGPT-maker’s models only “serve about 5% of Cursor user traffic.” The comment seemed designed to imply that OpenAI’s models weren’t very popular with developers using Cursor, and wouldn’t meaningfully affect its business.
Cursor 的创始人兼首席执行官 Michael Truell（目前在 SpaceX 领导团队）在周五晚些时候通过 X 平台公开回应了 OpenAI 的声明，声称 ChatGPT 开发商的模型“仅服务于 Cursor 约 5% 的用户流量”。这一评论似乎旨在暗示 OpenAI 的模型在 Cursor 的开发者中并不受欢迎，且不会对其业务产生实质性影响。
OpenAI’s head of core products, Thibault Sottiaux, was quick to point out that token usage is “not a proxy for revenue nor value created,” and asked Truell to “share the math” behind the 5 percent number.
OpenAI 核心产品负责人 Thibault Sottiaux 迅速指出，Token 使用量“既不能代表收入，也不能代表创造的价值”，并要求 Truell “分享一下”这 5% 数据背后的计算方式。
WIRED previously reported that Cursor leaders hoped to remain a platform for third-party AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic, even after the SpaceX acquisition. Some AI insiders considered that wishful thinking, assuming that Cursor and OpenAI’s breakup has long been a foregone conclusion. As OpenAI builds Codex into a large AI coding business, it increasingly finds itself competing with Cursor for customers. Nevertheless, the companies have operated relatively peacefully, as partners and competitors, for well over a year.
《连线》此前曾报道，Cursor 的领导层希望在被 SpaceX 收购后，仍能作为 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 等第三方 AI 模型的平台。一些 AI 业内人士认为这只是“一厢情愿”，并认为 Cursor 与 OpenAI 的分手早已是注定的结局。随着 OpenAI 将 Codex 打造成大型 AI 编程业务，它发现自己与 Cursor 在争夺客户方面的竞争日益激烈。尽管如此，这两家公司在过去一年多里一直作为合作伙伴和竞争对手，相对和平地共存。
Evidently, that arrangement was no longer possible with Musk in control of Cursor. OpenAI may have determined that its Cursor partnership was not worth the risk that SpaceX might distill its best AI models. The company noted in its blog post that, earlier this year, Musk seemingly said that xAI—now a part of SpaceX—used OpenAI’s models to train its own. The apparent admission came during Musk’s deposition in his lawsuit against OpenAI, in which he claimed that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman had stolen a charity they created together roughly a decade ago. A federal jury dismissed the suit earlier this year.
显然，在马斯克掌控 Cursor 后，这种安排已不再可能。OpenAI 可能认为，与 Cursor 的合作不值得冒 SpaceX 可能窃取其顶尖 AI 模型的风险。该公司在博客中提到，今年早些时候，马斯克似乎曾表示 xAI（现已并入 SpaceX）使用了 OpenAI 的模型来训练自己的模型。这一明显的承认出现在马斯克起诉 OpenAI 的证词中，当时他声称 Sam Altman 和 Greg Brockman 窃取了他们大约十年前共同创立的慈善机构。联邦陪审团已于今年早些时候驳回了该诉讼。
OpenAI and Cursor have a long, complicated history of their own. OpenAI’s startup fund was one of the first investors in Cursor, participating in its 2023 seed round. At the time, the idea that a young startup could compete with Microsoft’s popular AI coding tool, GitHub Copilot, seemed like a pipe dream. But in the years since, Cursor’s popularity with developers became undeniable.
OpenAI 和 Cursor 之间有着悠久而复杂的历史。OpenAI 的创业基金是 Cursor 的首批投资者之一，参与了其 2023 年的种子轮融资。当时，一家初创公司能够与微软广受欢迎的 AI 编程工具 GitHub Copilot 竞争的想法似乎还是天方夜谭。但在此后的几年里，Cursor 在开发者中的受欢迎程度已毋庸置疑。
WIRED previously reported that OpenAI approached Cursor about an acquisition at one point, though the talks never reached an advanced stage. By the summer of 2025, Truell appeared prominently in OpenAI’s marketing materials for the launch of its long awaited GPT-5 AI model.
《连线》此前曾报道，OpenAI 曾就收购事宜接触过 Cursor，但谈判从未进入深入阶段。到 2025 年夏天，Truell 已在 OpenAI 备受期待的 GPT-5 AI 模型发布营销材料中占据了显著位置。
Cursor isn’t done with third-party AI models just yet. In the wake of OpenAI’s announcement, Anthropic cofounder Tom Brown said his company would continue to make Claude models available in Cursor. I’m not sure that’s out of the goodness of their heart—Anthropic may have to play nice with Cursor because it depends on Musk’s SpaceX for $45 billion of data center capacity. Last year, Anthropic had no problem cutting off the AI coding startup called Windsurf when OpenAI was rumored to be acquiring it. (Windsurf was ultimately bought by another startup, Cognition.) At the time, Anthropic cofounder Jared Kaplan told me, “It would be odd for us to sell Claude to OpenAI.”
Cursor 并没有完全放弃第三方 AI 模型。在 OpenAI 发布声明后，Anthropic 联合创始人 Tom Brown 表示，他的公司将继续在 Cursor 中提供 Claude 模型。我不确定这是否出于好心——Anthropic 可能不得不与 Cursor 保持良好关系，因为它依赖马斯克的 SpaceX 提供价值 450 亿美元的数据中心容量。去年，当有传言称 OpenAI 将收购 AI 编程初创公司 Windsurf 时，Anthropic 毫不犹豫地切断了与后者的合作。（Windsurf 最终被另一家初创公司 Cognition 收购。）当时，Anthropic 联合创始人 Jared Kaplan 曾告诉我：“把 Claude 卖给 OpenAI 对我们来说很奇怪。”
I guess it’s fine to sell Claude to SpaceX, though?
不过，我想把 Claude 卖给 SpaceX 应该就没问题了吧？
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