Anysphere (Cursor) — AI supply-chain exposure

Anysphere makes Cursor, an AI-native code editor that sits at the application end of the chain — it wraps frontier models in a developer workflow, suggesting, editing and explaining code as engineers work. It is a producer of a developer tool, but structurally it is also one of the largest buyers of inference around, because every assisted keystroke resolves into model calls. Its growth has been unusually fast for software.

That dual position is the hook. Cursor captures value at the surface, where users pay for a polished product, while depending entirely on the model providers underneath it for capability, cost and availability — it is simultaneously a major demand driver for inference and exposed to the terms of the models it resells. Its moat is workflow and habit lock-in with developers, which is sticky. Its vulnerability is that the same labs it buys inference from are building competing coding tools of their own.