FTX Clears Cursor’s 5% Stake for $200k: SpaceX Valuation Now $200k

According to a CoinDesk report on 4/23, FTX’s bankruptcy trustee sold approximately a 5% stake in Anysphere—held by Alameda Research—for $200,000 in 2023, the company behind the AI code editor Cursor. If calculated based on the $60 billion valuation SpaceX has recently discussed, that stake is now worth about $3 billion, or 15,000 times the liquidation price from that year.

Alameda acquired the 5% stake for $200,000 in 2022

CoinDesk noted that in April 2022, Alameda Research participated in a $400,000 pre-seed round for Anysphere, investing $200,000 to obtain roughly a 5% stake. Anysphere later developed Cursor, an AI-powered code editor that became one of the representative products in the AI code editor market between 2024 and 2025.

Sold in 2023 bankruptcy liquidation for the original investment amount

FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, and its new management team initiated the asset disposition phase in 2023. According to CoinDesk, this Cursor stake was sold for $200,000 that year, and CoinDesk did not disclose the buyer’s identity. The sale proceeds were exactly equal to Alameda’s original investment amount, meaning no capital gains were realized on the books.

Similar forced-selling controversies are not uncommon in the FTX bankruptcy case. In the past, unlocked SOL and other altcoin assets have also caused altcoins to significantly underperform Bitcoin from 2023 to 2025.

SpaceX’s $6 billion acquisition deal reveals the price gap

CoinDesk reported that SpaceX is currently in talks with Anysphere on two partnership models: one is a full acquisition at an estimated valuation of about $60 billion, and the other is forming a partnership at a valuation of $10 billion. If calculated using the $60 billion valuation, the 5% stake sold by FTX that year corresponds to about $3 billion today—an 15,000-times gap compared with the sale price.

Previously, Cursor was also in talks in April 2026 about raising $2 billion, with its valuation reaching $50 billion, showing that its valuation jumped in multiple rounds within three years.

SBF includes this case in his liquidation criticism

Sam Bankman-Fried is currently serving a 25-year federal sentence and, over the past year, has continued speaking from prison, arguing that FTX’s bankruptcy trustee sold assets too early and destroyed the recovery value that originally belonged to creditors. Earlier this year in February, he projected that if the bankruptcy trustee had kept the position through 2024 to 2025, FTX’s net asset value could theoretically reach $78 billion.

The Cursor case serves as a specific supporting example for his argument: if the bankruptcy trustee had retained that 5% stake, today it could return an additional $3 billion in present value to creditors. However, legally, bankruptcy trusts are obligated to liquidate assets at a reasonable time, and maximizing the price is not the only goal.

Closing: the timing risk in bankruptcy-sale valuations

For crypto firms investing in early-stage AI startups, the FTX case illustrates the risk of misalignment between bankruptcy liquidation timing and the valuation curve of technology industries. When AI valuations jumped in stepwise fashion from 2024 to 2026, assets valued in bankruptcy based on 2023 market prices became a structural point of value leakage. For Cursor, this exposure has once again made its shareholder structure and early fundraising history a focus of attention for the AI industry.

This article, FTX liquidated Cursor’s 5% stake for $200,000—now worth $3 billion under SpaceX’s valuation, was first published on Chain News ABMedia.