Cursor is a proprietary AI-powered

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

and

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

designed to enhance developer productivity by integrating advanced artificial intelligence features directly into the coding environment. It is a fork of

Visual Studio Code Visual Studio Code, commonly referred to as VS Code, is an integrated development environment developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux, macOS and web browsers. Features include support for debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code comp ...

with additional AI features like code generation, smart rewrites and codebase queries. Cursor is

proprietary software Proprietary software is computer software, software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing t ...

and developed by Anysphere Inc, an applied research lab involved in building AI systems. Notably, Cursor's agent mode can complete tasks end-to-end, quickly executing commands while keeping programmers in the loop.

Features

Cursor has a wide range of features using

large language model A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially language generation. The largest and most capable LLMs are g ...

s to manipulate text with

autocomplete Autocomplete, or word completion, is a feature in which an application software, application predicts the rest of a word a user is typing. In Android (operating system), Android and iOS smartphones, this is called predictive text. In graphical us ...

and chat query function. As it is a

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods either to h ...

of Visual Studio Code, existing extensions and settings are able to be integrated into the user's workflow. Cursor allows developers to write code using natural language instructions. Users can generate or update parts of their code by providing prompts. It can also index the entire codebase, which can be queried in natural language. The editor offers smart rewrite capabilities, allowing users to update multiple lines of code simultaneously, which is particularly useful for refactoring and implementing bulk changes efficiently. The editor predicts subsequent code edits and user can jump and apply them using tabs.

History

Anysphere was founded in 2022 by Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark, Aman Sanger and Michael Truell, four friends that met while studying at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

. In 2023, they launched Cursor and later that year raised $8 million in seed funding, led by

OpenAI OpenAI, Inc. is an American artificial intelligence (AI) organization founded in December 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. It aims to develop "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence (AGI), which it defines ...

's Startup Fund. In August 2024, Anysphere raised $60 million in a Series A funding round led by

Andreessen Horowitz AH Capital Management, LLC (commonly known as Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z) is an American privately held venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of M ...

, valuing the company at $400 million. In November 2024, Anysphere announced that it had acquired AI coding assistant Supermaven. In January 2025,

Thrive Capital Thrive Capital Management, LLC, commonly Thrive Capital, is an American venture capital firm based in New York City. It focuses on software and internet investments. The firm was founded by Joshua Kushner who is also co-founder of Oscar Health ...

and Andreessen Horowitz led a Series B funding round. Anysphere raised $105 million in this round, which valued the company at $2.5 billion. In May 2025, Anysphere reached a valuation of $9 billion after raising $900 million from Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Accel among others. In April 2025, Cursor experienced a bug impacting the ability to use the software on multiple devices at once. However, a Cursor customer support email using AI-generated responses hallucinated a policy prohibiting a single subscription license from being used on multiple devices for security reasons, and incorrectly stated that a separate subscription had to be purchased for each device. Amid criticism of the new "policy" on

Reddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...

, an Anysphere spokesperson issued a retraction clarifying that no such policy existed, and that it was an erroneous response from a "front-line AI support bot".

Privacy and security

Cursor offers privacy options, including a Privacy Mode where the user's code is never stored remotely. The platform is SOC 2 certified, ensuring adherence to industry-standard security practices.

Community and adoption

Cursor has garnered attention from engineers at companies such as Bramerz, Shopify, OpenAI, and Instacart. Users have reported significant workflow improvements, citing the editor's intuitive AI integration and efficiency in code generation and editing.

Comparison with other AI code editors

In comparison to other AI-powered code editors like

GitHub Copilot GitHub Copilot is a code completion and automatic programming tool developed by GitHub and OpenAI that assists users of Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, Neovim, and JetBrains integrated development environments (IDEs) by autocomplete, autocom ...

, Cursor offers deep integration within its standalone environment, providing advanced customization options. While both tools aim to enhance coding efficiency, the choice between them may depend on individual preferences regarding integration and workflow.

References

External links

* {{Generative AI Integrated development environments Free software distributions