Yesterday I read about Cursor being sold for $60bn. Cursor being worth more than 50x Boston Dynamics seems insane.

$325M for 9.65% implies a valuation of around $3.4 billion, so it's more like 18x.

Regardless, Boston Dynamics has been burning cash for 35 years and all they have to show for it are some fancy demos and trial deployments. Eventually you have to wonder what their future prospects are.

	▲	quickthrowman 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Eventually you have to wonder what their future prospects are. Boston Dynamics is a defense contractor, their future prospects are designing and manufacturing war machines, the same thing they’ve always done. The dog robots are meant to carry stuff/support combat troops. The humanoid robots are designed to rescue injured soldiers and possibly other risky tasks. They may have plans to commercialize these robots, but I’m not sure where the consumer/commercial market for robotic dogs is. Jobs that need machines to carry heavy stuff already have solutions and have had them for a long time, and they’re safe to operate as long as you’re not in a combat zone. I guess it would be nice to have a robot dog portage my packs and canoe for me in the BWCA but I’m not spending new car money for that.

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raincole 23 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I know quite a lot of people who use (or used to use) Cursor. I don't personally know one single person who owns a humanoid robot. YMMV.

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dehugger 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I was trying to think about the why with Cursor, and the only thing that makes sense to me is they wanted experts in making harnesses so that they can pivot that expertise towards building harnesses intended for autonomous agents to use instead of humans. There's no world where a 60 billion IDE makes sense.

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monocasa 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think it's more that Space X's valuation is ridiculous, and they need acquisitions that are ridiculous to pretend that the emperor is still wearing clothes.

When cursor is selling for $60B, then grok has to really be worth several times that, right?

	▲	dehugger 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't know that I disagree, but this had to be in the works before the IPO right? Acquisitions don't typically materialize in a timeline of <1 week (or perhaps they do when someone walks in and offers 60B...)

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lokimedes 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not just an IDE, look at the prospect, they’ll soon lead in farming, genetics, AGI and teleportation. Remember to price in the TAM of that!

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skipants 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Because it is.

The average (and above-average?) investor really does not understand tech.

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void-star 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This was just ~10% of boston dynamics at that price. HN pro-tip: before commenting, read the articles not just the headlines.

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georgemcbay 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> This was just ~10% of boston dynamics at that price. HN pro-tip: before commenting, read the articles not just the headlines.

I'm not sure if you're following your own advice...?

The ~10% just sold was bought for $325 million.

The total price they paid was $1.205 billion ($880 million in 2021, $325 million now).

The $1.1 billion figure in the HN headline is kind of just wrong and presumably based on what they considered to be Boston Dynamics' total valuation in 2021, but represents neither what they paid for the ~10% nor the actual total they paid over both transactions.

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NewJazz 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Still only 3b valuation, or 20x less than Cursor.

	▲	void-star 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ack Yep my bad. Actually my bad for reading the “comment” incorrectly and being out of the loop with the cursor sale til now.