There's a lot of investment in AI for its potential.

An AI editor company might never make 60B itself, but it might help another AI company grow faster (relative to its competitors, who might also want to buy the AI editor company).

What else can an AI giant do with all that money?

Build in-house: they do, and there's only so fast they can hire/build.

Save? Yes, still do, but if they save it all, and let competitors buy Cursor, they lose.

Invest in other fields? Sure, but if they lose the AI race, that's all they'll be left with.

Tesla's IPO is a bet that if Musk has the right opportunity, he will do well. So he's given a big bucket of money, and needs a team that can deliver. So he buys Cursor.

The winners are Cursor. The losers are whoever is funding the AI companies that get outcompeted.

(Full disclosure: I don't know anything about Cursor, nor much about Tesla or its IPO.)

But surely 60B could buy you something better if you want to spend money on AI. The number seems completely arbitrary, would Cursor say no to 40B? I really don’t see Cursor as bringing them anything of actual value, it’s more of a bragging thing, but I can be very wrong.