3 ms·

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

skipants 4mo ago
Because it is. The average (and above-average?) investor really does not understand tech.
dehugger 4mo ago
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.
- lokimedes 4mo ago
  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!
  - chairmansteve 4mo ago
    Time travel!
- monocasa 4mo ago
  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 4mo ago
    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...)
    - monocasa 4mo ago
      Inflating SpaceX's perceived value would have been the primary goal for a lot of the business for at least the past year leading up to the IPO.
  - mrweasel 4mo ago
    It's probably a bit of both. Space X is overvalued, and so is Cursor. It's easier for Space X to justify buying Cursor for $60B than it would be for other, because it's a rounding error compared to Space X's valuation. I haven't tried Cursor, and I'm sure it's a perfectly good IDE, but given that JetBrains was valued at $7B in 2021 [1] $60B seems rather high. 1) https://servreality.com/news/jetbrains-startup-valued-at-7-billion/ https://servreality.com/news/jetbrains-startup-valued-at-7-b...,
    - siva7 4mo ago
      How far we have come that 60B could be considered a rounding error for a company
      - inglor_cz 4mo ago
        The US has GDP of 32 trillion. In an economy of that size, you would expect a few companies for which 60B is not crazy money, although rounding error is really stretching it.
void-star 4mo ago
This was just ~10% of boston dynamics at that price. HN pro-tip: before commenting, read the articles not just the headlines.
- NewJazz 4mo ago
  Still only 3b valuation, or 20x less than Cursor.
  - void-star 4mo ago
    Ack Yep my bad. Actually my bad for reading the “comment” incorrectly and being out of the loop with the cursor sale til now.
- georgemcbay 4mo ago
  > 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.
jonas21 4mo ago
$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 4mo ago
  > 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.
  - ajmurmann 4mo ago
    Those robot dogs have been looking amazing for as long as I can think. What's in the way of the big military contract?
    - chairmansteve 4mo ago
      In Ukraine they are using tracked autonomuous vehicles for the same tasks. Much cheaper.
      - roenxi 4mo ago
        It is remarkable how rarely alternative movement styles like slug crawling, flying or rolling get used in the animal kingdom to move around compared to 2-8 legs. If a company can figure out how to do legs and manufacture them cheaply I expect there'd a be a lot of money in that; they must have some sort of practical advantage somewhere in warefare. Although the tracked drones we see starting to appear in war are terrifying and I'd rather not be on the receiving end of them.
raincole 4mo ago
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.
- KeplerBoy 4mo ago
  I know quite lot of people who could fork vs code and write a passable agent harness. I don't know one single person who could build a humanoid robot and I majored in mechatronjcs.
wavemode 4mo ago
SpaceX paid that $60 billion entirely in stock. In other words, they traded 2% of their own inflated stock value, for 100% of Cursor's inflated stock value. This is actually a great deal for SpaceX. If they had paid $60 billion dollars in cash for Cursor, it would have been a ripoff.
- ajmurmann 4mo ago
  Couldn't they just have sold their stock for dollars?
  - wavemode 4mo ago
    Dumping $60 billion worth of shares would tank the stock price, causing it to not convert into anywhere near $60 billion.
  - bruce511 4mo ago
    You can't sell 60b worth of stock without moving the price. It has to be dribbled out over time. Some buyees of course insist on cash. Which moves the effect of stock sales onto the buyer. Most buyers would prefer to pay in stock as it doesn't impact cash flow at all. So, a all-stock deal already has the future-price of the stock built in. Which probably (but not necessarily) inflates the headline number. In other words, let's say I offer you 60b stock[1], or 30b cash. Which would you take? If you're risk adverse, take 30b cash. You can buy a nice diversified portfolio with that. If you're confident SpaceX will be around say 10 years from now, and still worth good money, then take the 60b and sell it slowly over a long time. It's a big bet though (if SpaceX goes into liquidation, all stock immediately goes to 0.) Of course if you think the price will ultimately go up, then it's a good choice as well. [1] there are likely some boundaries which dictate when you can start selling the stock.
    - ajmurmann 4mo ago
      Given the company is supposedly worse $2.5T, one would think the impact of selling 2.4% of that would have a fairly small impact on the price.
mrweasel 4mo ago
There's a lot of insanity in the stock market. SpaceX is apparently worth more than the entire aviation industry[1] and Tesla is worth more than all other cars makers combined, or just about[2]. 1) https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1u7aiwg/oc_spacex_vs_aerospace_and_defense_sector/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1u7aiwg/oc... 2) https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1hro33r/global_automotive_industry_by_market_cap/ https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1hro33r/global...

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

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.

lokimedes 4mo ago
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!
- chairmansteve 4mo ago
  Time travel!
monocasa 4mo ago
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 4mo ago
  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...)
  - monocasa 4mo ago
    Inflating SpaceX's perceived value would have been the primary goal for a lot of the business for at least the past year leading up to the IPO.
- mrweasel 4mo ago
  It's probably a bit of both. Space X is overvalued, and so is Cursor. It's easier for Space X to justify buying Cursor for $60B than it would be for other, because it's a rounding error compared to Space X's valuation. I haven't tried Cursor, and I'm sure it's a perfectly good IDE, but given that JetBrains was valued at $7B in 2021 [1] $60B seems rather high. 1) https://servreality.com/news/jetbrains-startup-valued-at-7-billion/ https://servreality.com/news/jetbrains-startup-valued-at-7-b...,
  - siva7 4mo ago
    How far we have come that 60B could be considered a rounding error for a company
    - inglor_cz 4mo ago
      The US has GDP of 32 trillion. In an economy of that size, you would expect a few companies for which 60B is not crazy money, although rounding error is really stretching it.

void-star 4mo ago

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

NewJazz 4mo ago
Still only 3b valuation, or 20x less than Cursor.
- void-star 4mo ago
  Ack Yep my bad. Actually my bad for reading the “comment” incorrectly and being out of the loop with the cursor sale til now.
georgemcbay 4mo ago
> 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.

jonas21 4mo ago

$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 4mo ago
> 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.
- ajmurmann 4mo ago
  Those robot dogs have been looking amazing for as long as I can think. What's in the way of the big military contract?
  - chairmansteve 4mo ago
    In Ukraine they are using tracked autonomuous vehicles for the same tasks. Much cheaper.
    - roenxi 4mo ago
      It is remarkable how rarely alternative movement styles like slug crawling, flying or rolling get used in the animal kingdom to move around compared to 2-8 legs. If a company can figure out how to do legs and manufacture them cheaply I expect there'd a be a lot of money in that; they must have some sort of practical advantage somewhere in warefare. Although the tracked drones we see starting to appear in war are terrifying and I'd rather not be on the receiving end of them.

raincole 4mo ago

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.

KeplerBoy 4mo ago
I know quite lot of people who could fork vs code and write a passable agent harness. I don't know one single person who could build a humanoid robot and I majored in mechatronjcs.

wavemode 4mo ago

SpaceX paid that $60 billion entirely in stock. In other words, they traded 2% of their own inflated stock value, for 100% of Cursor's inflated stock value. This is actually a great deal for SpaceX. If they had paid $60 billion dollars in cash for Cursor, it would have been a ripoff.

ajmurmann 4mo ago
Couldn't they just have sold their stock for dollars?
- wavemode 4mo ago
  Dumping $60 billion worth of shares would tank the stock price, causing it to not convert into anywhere near $60 billion.
- bruce511 4mo ago
  You can't sell 60b worth of stock without moving the price. It has to be dribbled out over time. Some buyees of course insist on cash. Which moves the effect of stock sales onto the buyer. Most buyers would prefer to pay in stock as it doesn't impact cash flow at all. So, a all-stock deal already has the future-price of the stock built in. Which probably (but not necessarily) inflates the headline number. In other words, let's say I offer you 60b stock[1], or 30b cash. Which would you take? If you're risk adverse, take 30b cash. You can buy a nice diversified portfolio with that. If you're confident SpaceX will be around say 10 years from now, and still worth good money, then take the 60b and sell it slowly over a long time. It's a big bet though (if SpaceX goes into liquidation, all stock immediately goes to 0.) Of course if you think the price will ultimately go up, then it's a good choice as well. [1] there are likely some boundaries which dictate when you can start selling the stock.
  - ajmurmann 4mo ago
    Given the company is supposedly worse $2.5T, one would think the impact of selling 2.4% of that would have a fairly small impact on the price.

mrweasel 4mo ago

There's a lot of insanity in the stock market. SpaceX is apparently worth more than the entire aviation industry[1] and Tesla is worth more than all other cars makers combined, or just about[2]. 1) https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1u7aiwg/oc_spacex_vs_aerospace_and_defense_sector/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1u7aiwg/oc... 2) https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1hro33r/global_automotive_industry_by_market_cap/ https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1hro33r/global...