Anysphere, the San Francisco-based startup behind the AI coding assistant Cursor, has transformed developer tools in the age of generative AI. In June 2025, just three years after its founding, Anysphere secured a $900 million funding round led by Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and DST Global, propelling its valuation to $9.9 billion.
The founders: MIT origins and a shared vision
Anysphere was founded in 2022 by four MIT friends: Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark, and Aman Sanger. Through research at MIT CSAIL, internships at Google, and participation in OpenAI’s accelerator program, each founder developed deep expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and large-scale software engineering. During late-night hackathons, their frustration with coding’s repetitive and fragmented nature inspired them to create a more intelligent, intuitive coding assistant.
The company’s mission emerged from firsthand experience. The founders noticed that existing coding tools mainly focused on syntax and file management, leaving developers to grapple with complex codebases and repetitive tasks alone. Their experience at MIT and OpenAI’s accelerator convinced them that AI could bridge this gap by enhancing developer capabilities rather than replacing them.
They set an ambitious goal: to build an AI-powered environment beyond code autocompletion to understand and evolve with its users truly. Starting with a fork of Visual Studio Code, they added sophisticated AI features to create Cursor. This tool would make programming “an order of magnitude faster, more fun, and more creative.”
From day one, Anysphere aimed to revolutionise coding through cutting-edge AI, creating a “human-AI programmer” that could outperform pure AI systems. Cursor emerged as their answer to the need for a tool to understand, automate, and accelerate the entire development process.
Technology: Cursor’s edge in a crowded market
From day one, Anysphere aimed to revolutionise coding through cutting-edge AI, creating a “human-AI programmer” that could outperform pure AI systems. Cursor emerged as their answer to the need for a tool to understand, automate, and accelerate the entire development process.
Cursor thrives in a competitive landscape alongside GitHub Copilot, Gemini, Amazon Q Developer, Windsurf, GitLab Duo, JetBrains AI Assistant, Sourcegraph Cody, and Tabnine. While others emphasise single-file suggestions, Cursor distinguishes itself through comprehensive project understanding and a conversational interface.
Its Agent Mode enables project-wide automation, and its adaptive learning customises suggestions to team and individual coding styles. As a VS Code fork, it offers developers seamless integration. Major tech companies, including Stripe, OpenAI, and Spotify, have adopted Cursor, which generates nearly a billion lines of code daily.
Cursor’s “Agent Mode” lets developers give high-level commands—like implementing authentication across a project—and automatically executes the changes, saving countless hours. The platform learns each user’s style and project conventions, delivering increasingly relevant, context-aware suggestions.
For debugging and refactoring, developers can share error messages or request complex changes, and Cursor diagnoses, explains, and implements solutions in plain language. It maintains code quality through automatic formatting and linting suggestions while supporting numerous programming languages across different development environments.
At its heart, Cursor is an “AI pair programmer,” combining human creativity with machine precision. Its Model Context Protocol (MCP) optimises the AI’s code context, leading to more intelligent, accurate responses.
What’s next for Anysphere’s Cursor?
Anysphere’s philosophy is straightforward: AI should enhance, not replace, developers. Cursor is a collaborative intelligence — an assistant that lightens cognitive load, speeds up development, and naturally instils best practices. This approach has struck a chord with engineers and enterprises, driving Cursor’s widespread adoption and Anysphere’s remarkable growth in revenue and valuation.
Anysphere’s evolution from MIT dorm rooms to a $9.9 billion valuation showcases the power of founder-led vision, technical excellence, and unwavering focus on real developer needs. With Cursor, they’re leading a new era of human-AI collaboration in software development.
