OpenAI Cuts $1B Customer Over Elon Musk Ties

OpenAI walked away from more than $1 billion in annual revenue last Friday, and it did so over a business relationship with Elon Musk. The company announced in a late-night blog post that it's winding down its partnership with Cursor, the AI coding tool that SpaceX bought in a $60 billion deal. Cursor has spent years paying OpenAI to run its models inside the coding editor, and the arrangement made Cursor one of OpenAI's five biggest customers by revenue at the start of 2026, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke to WIRED. By this spring, OpenAI projected that business alone would generate over $1 billion a year.

Those numbers haven't been reported before, and they put a real price tag on how far OpenAI will go to keep distance from Musk, who cofounded OpenAI before leaving and has since sued the company and battled Sam Altman in public for years. OpenAI declined to comment to WIRED, and neither SpaceX nor Cursor responded to requests for comment. The timing matters too: OpenAI is gearing up for a public offering next year, and it wants investors to see a company that isn't leaning on any one customer, or entangled with any one billionaire, too heavily.