Here is what actually happened and what I think about it.
SpaceX Is About to Swallow Cursor
Word out of the Valley is SpaceX has locked in the right to buy Cursor later this year. Deal size is up to 60 billion dollars. Fallback is a 10 billion dollar payment tied to joint work the two companies are doing.
Cursor is also raising 2 billion in a parallel round from Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, and Thrive.
Why it matters. Cursor is the editor a lot of engineers live in now. If Elon's rocket company owns the tool writing everyone's code, that puts a lot of power in one building.
My take. Nobody asked for a rocket company to own the pipes of software development. But here we are. If you are a heavy Cursor user, start thinking about your escape hatch. These deals have a way of changing the product, the pricing, or both, and usually not in your favor.
Google Says 75 Percent of Its New Code Is AI Written
At Cloud Next this week, Sundar Pichai said 75 percent of all new code at Google is now AI generated and then approved by an engineer. Last fall that number was 50 percent.
Why it matters. Six months ago that figure was a headline. Now it is the floor. Google's engineers are reviewers as much as they are authors.
My take. I do not buy that this means software gets twice as good twice as fast. Most of the gain is boilerplate and glue code a tired engineer would have copy pasted anyway. The hard part of building software was never typing.
But the signal is real. If you run an engineering team and your review process still assumes a human typed every line, fix that this quarter. Your reviewers need new habits.
Snap Cuts 1000 Jobs and Points at AI
Evan Spiegel sent a note this week saying 1000 Snap employees are out and another 300 open roles are getting closed. The reason he gave was AI. He also mentioned that 65 percent of Snap's new code is AI generated.
Why it matters. We have been waiting to see which public company CEO would say the quiet part out loud. Spiegel just did.
My take. The CEO blaming AI for layoffs is a tell. Sometimes it is true. Sometimes it is cover for a business that was not growing fast enough to carry the payroll. Probably a little of both here.
If you are worried about your own role, the answer has not changed. Get closer to the customer. Get closer to the product decisions. Typing code is not the career it used to be.
The Thread Tying These Together
Three stories. One theme. The people who write software are now reviewing software. The companies selling the tools are consolidating fast. And the first wave of layoffs has started landing with AI as the stated reason.
This is not the future. This is this week. Act accordingly.