FTX Estate Sold Its Cursor Stake for $200K — That Stake Is Now Worth $3 Billion!

The FTX bankruptcy estate liquidated a 5% stake in AI coding startup Cursor — acquired by Alameda Research in April 2022 for $200,000 — at exactly cost in April 2023, capturing zero appreciation. SpaceX's agreement to acquire Cursor at a $60 billion valuation now marks that same stake at approximately $3 billion, a 15,000x gap that stands as one of the largest single missed recoveries in crypto bankruptcy history.

The sale wasn't a distressed token dumped below water. It was an early equity position in a pre-revenue AI startup, sold under a cash-conversion mandate in a bear market the same quarter Cursor launched its AI coding product. The 2025–2026 AI boom did the rest: Cursor now powers 67% of Fortune 500 companies and has crossed $1 billion in annualized revenue.

FTX creditors were made whole in dollar terms under the distribution plan, but the Cursor outcome crystallises the…