AI coding startup Cursor plans new model to rival Anthropic, OpenAI

Cursor, a leading artificial intelligence startup for coding, is set to release a more efficient AI model for software development in a bid to keep pace with larger firms like Anthropic PBC and OpenAI.

The company on Thursday plans to unveil Composer 2, which is meant to work as an AI agent that carries out lengthy coding tasks on a user’s behalf. Anthropic and OpenAI have also introduced more powerful AI models that they say can take on increasingly complicated and time-consuming work writing software.

San Francisco-based Cursor launched its first AI coding assistant in 2023 and quickly caught on with professional software developers, leading to a new style of programming known as vibe coding.


The company now has more than 1 million daily users, including 50,000 businesses such as payment processing firm Stripe and creative software maker Figma. Cursor has also been in talks to raise a new round of financing at a roughly $50 billion valuation, Bloomberg News reported this month.

However, the company faces heated competition from OpenAI, Anthropic and a number of newer startups that offer AI coding assistants designed to field more complex tasks on behalf of the user. Cursor supports a wide range of models, including those from OpenAI and Anthropic, and counts the ChatGPT maker as an investor.

Cursor cofounder Aman Sanger, who leads its research team, said the startup focused on training Composer 2 solely on coding-related data — an effort that let it build a smaller model that’s meant to be less expensive to use. Unlike other leading AI developers whose tools are used for a wide range of tasks, Cursor’s model is designed purely for coding.

“It won’t help you do your taxes,” Sanger said. “It won’t be able to write poems.”