Musk’s SpaceXAI Pairs Grok 4.6 With a $60B Cursor Plan, as Safety Concerns Persist

Elon Musk’s newly combined SpaceXAI is advancing on two fronts: Grok 4.6 emphasizes long-running agents and interactive visual work, while SpaceX has outlined a $60 billion acquisition of coding startup Cursor. That product push sits beside reported harmful-image use and an external safety ranking that placed xAI near the bottom of the assessed group.

xAI merged with SpaceX and became a subsidiary called SpaceXAI. The combined business went public in June at a reported $1.7 trillion valuation, in what TIME described as the largest IPO in history. The planned Cursor purchase would put an AI coding startup inside the same organization as the Grok model business.

Two parts of the AI product strategy

SpaceXAI released Grok 4.6 in August as its top model. TIME characterized the release as focused on long-running agents—systems intended to work across extended tasks—and more ambitious interactive and visual work, at a competitive price. Cursor represents a distinct product category: AI coding software. The proposed acquisition would therefore join a general-purpose model effort with a developer-focused tool, though the transaction remains a plan rather than a completed deal.

Safety is part of the product test

In January, xAI added stronger safeguards two weeks after reports emerged that Grok was being used to create nonconsensual sexual images of women and children. The reported abuse involved the company’s own product, making the effectiveness of those protections a direct question as it pursues more capable agentic and visual work.

The Future of Life Institute placed xAI seventh of nine model makers in its most recent AI Safety Index. The nonprofit researches and advocates against large-scale technology risks. Its result is a comparative assessment, not a universal safety measure, and the wider field performed poorly: no company in the index received a grade above C+. Still, xAI’s position makes the gap between product ambition and outside safety scrutiny unusually visible.

A changing posture on AI risk

Musk was an early investor in DeepMind and a co-founder and donor to OpenAI, citing concerns about AI’s existential risks at the time. His lawsuit against OpenAI was dismissed in May. At a Grok launch event last year, Musk said AI would most likely be good for humanity, while saying he wanted to be alive to see what happened even if it were not. TIME disclosed that its co-chair and owner, Marc Benioff, is a SpaceX investor.