The Collection

OpenAI intends to stop providing its models to Cursor after Cursor’s change of control. That is Latent Space, via swyx’s AINews of 29 August, reading OpenAI’s notice, following the closing of Cursor’s acquisition by SpaceX last week. Future models withheld. Existing access proposed to end on 12 November 2026. The date is a proposed end, not a lock we have already heard click. We print it as proposed.

OpenAI’s blog cites “our experience with Elon Musk’s companies violating contracts.” Years of public acrimony. A failed lawsuit this year. That last clause is swyx’s wording, not a court caption we have in the bag. The lease, such as it was, ran until the owner of the editor became the wrong owner. Kilo, in the same day’s bag: “That is the risk of renting your workflow from companies whose incentives you do not control.”

Future models withheld. Existing access ends 12 November.

A year ago Cursor was on the GPT-5 launch video. Cutting them off was a nonstarter when Claude models were far ahead in coding. Today GPT 5.6 is a serious coding alternative to the Claude 5 series, and Cursor, now SpaceX, is promoting Grok 4.6. Grok Bot is a viable competitor to Codex and ChatGPT. That is swyx again. The tenancy was written for a customer. It was not written for a competitor. The editor is still the same. The model is the rent.

Cursor’s only response so far is diplomatic. OpenAI is only 5 percent of Cursor traffic. They do not accept that the decision seems final. We print 5 percent as Cursor’s claim, not as a meter we have read. A diplomatic reply is not a continuance. The lock is still the notice.

Precedent sits on the same desk. Anthropic did similar to Windsurf when Windsurf was being considered for acquisition by OpenAI. The lab can cut the editor when the buyer is the wrong lab. The editor can claim the traffic is small. Neither sentence is a lease. The tenant is smaller in the lab’s traffic than the lab is in the tenant’s story.

They can cut you when they can compete.

Swyx’s point is the timing. A year ago, with Claude far ahead in coding, OpenAI cutting Cursor off was a nonstarter. Today GPT 5.6 is a serious alternative to the Claude 5 series. Cursor and SpaceX are promoting Grok 4.6. Grok Bot is a viable competitor to Codex and ChatGPT. The year of the launch video is over. The landlord can compete, so the landlord can send notice. Five percent is what they said. The workflow is still rented.

Kilo, writing the same day: that is the risk of renting your workflow from companies whose incentives you do not control. A model dropdown is not model freedom. You should change models without changing the rest of your development environment. There is a structural conflict when the coding-tool company also builds the model. Kilo does not build foundation models. That is their position. The migration guide at the end of the letter is a promo. We do not print it as news.

Martin Casado, in The AI Corner, is on the stickiness. Models are stickier than people assumed. Prepaid credits and procurement inertia. “I bought a bunch of credits from OpenAI, why would I swap them out?” Quality-based routing is AI-complete. Cost-based routing already works. If the credits stay put, the landlord does not need the rest of the building. The menu can show three names. The rent is still one invoice.

You change the model. You do not change the room.

The AI Corner, summarizing Casado, also has the week: SpaceX closed a $60 billion acquisition of Cursor. Stripe agreed to buy OpenRouter for more than $7 billion. Both a16z bets. $67 billion, seven days. Yesterday’s colophon left Next Big Teng’s deal list on the desk. We still do not print a close date we do not have. Last week, this cycle. The cutoff is today’s news. The stickiness is why the lock matters. When the buyer of the editor also sells a model, the dropdown is not an exit. It is a decoration on a lease.

SpaceX has taken steps to develop a foundry in Bastrop, Texas, about 30 miles from Austin, to make vanes and blades for large gas turbines, according to job listings and other indicators. That is The Information, Ann Davis Vaughan, 29 August, in the AI Infrastructure letter. The postings: senior operations engineer, “extreme owner of the construction, buildout, and operational ramp-up of a new blades and vanes foundry”; senior materials engineer; automation engineer; senior tooling engineer; a programmer for milling high-temperature superalloys at “SpaceX’s new industrial gas turbine (IGT) blades and vanes manufacturing line in Bastrop.”

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas’s research also shows Musk is developing such a plant. Dual use: Raptor turbopump castings and data-center turbine airfoils. Same alloys, furnaces, workforce. A global oligopoly of four casting companies has controlled vanes and blades engineered for 3,000 to 3,600 F, 800 degrees above their own melting point. Their foundries maxing out is a key reason large turbine makers like GE Vernova are sold out until 2030. Musk said in a February podcast that blades and vanes are “the limiting factor” to faster provisioning of turbines and standing up data centers. At the current production rate, “it’s not clear to me that there’s enough usable electricity to turn on all the AI chips that are being made.”

The blades are the limiting factor. The lock is on the editor.

If he succeeds, Musk could potentially build some of the 10 gigawatts or more of terrestrial data centers he has told SpaceX investors he could put up by the end of 2027. He said earlier this month he had secured Nvidia chips for these future sites. SpaceX shares plunged after that call, on cost fears. BloombergNEF: if planned off-grid gas plants for data centers come to fruition, they would boost U.S. CO2 emissions 20 percent. That figure would not include Musk’s latest efforts, but would count 2 GW of off-grid gas deployments that SpaceX’s xAI unit has said will be running by end of year at Memphis-area data centers. SpaceX did not return requests for comment.

Between March and June, Corey Trinetti at Measured AI has SpaceX buying about 830 nearby acres. Two newly developed buildings adjacent to the Starlink factory appeared in July satellite imagery. Trinetti was unable to find foundry permits or construction filings in Texas environmental or building records, so it is not clear whether a permitting process has started. That is the letter’s reporting. It is not a closed fact that the foundry is built. Jonas said Musk could access about 3 to 4 GW of power by the end of 2027 through purchase agreements. Fortress sold APR Energy, about 1 GW of mobile turbines in January, per APR, to Musk personally, an FTC filing in May. FTAI Aviation announced a $1.465 billion turbine sale in July via a Chinese JV to “a leading international cloud services provider.” Jonas has identified FTAI as a possible SpaceX supplier. We print that as Jonas, and as the letter. We do not print it as a confirmed SpaceX purchase. The owner of the editor is posting jobs for the missing power. The tenant rented the workflow. The landlord is also trying to own the electricity.

Rep. Greg Casar, Democrat of Texas, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, proposed a bill this month that would tax AI tokens. That is NYT DealBook, Sarah Kessler’s interview, 29 August. Tax the higher of tokens sold or revenue on AI sales, to prevent gaming the definition of a token. The tax starts low and ramps up if AI causes significant job loss. We do not invent a rate. None was given.

Revenue would fund a Work Protection Administration, new jobs, not a small UBI. Casar finds small UBI dystopic. Bill Gates this week suggested taxing AI tokens. There are no federal AI regulations. Casar says AI billionaires, he names Greg Brockman, are threatening to spend unprecedented amounts in the midterms. We print a proposed bill. We do not print a law.

Tax the token. The token is the rent.

The landlord already bills by the token. Congress would like a cut of the same unit. The cutoff in the other column is a reminder of who holds the meter. Saturday already had the quarter, and the chip-company purchase of the hub. We do not reprint them. The meter is today’s news. The lease was never written for the tenant to own the unit that is being counted.