According to TechCrunch, Anysphere, the company behind the AI coding assistant Cursor, has acquired Graphite, a startup that uses AI to review and debug code. While terms weren’t disclosed, Axios reported Cursor paid “way over” Graphite’s last valuation of $290 million, which was set when the five-year-old company raised a $52 million Series B earlier this year. This is part of an acquisition spree for Anysphere, which was last valued at a staggering $29 billion in November. Last month, it bought recruiting firm Growth by Design, and in July, it acquired talent from AI CRM startup Koala for a post-money valuation of $129 million. The deal strategically combines AI code writing with AI code review, specifically bringing Graphite’s ‘stacked pull request’ capability into Cursor’s toolkit alongside its existing Bugbot product.
Why this deal matters
Look, on the surface, it’s just another big AI startup buying a smaller one. But here’s the thing: it directly tackles the biggest bottleneck in AI-assisted development. Sure, Cursor can spit out code incredibly fast. But that code is often buggy, which just creates more work for engineers. Graphite’s whole raison d’être is finding and fixing those bugs automatically. So basically, Cursor is trying to own the entire “code creation-to-review” pipeline. It’s not just about writing code faster anymore; it’s about shipping reliable code faster. And that’s a much harder, more valuable problem to solve.
The stacked pull request advantage
The real technical gem in this deal seems to be Graphite’s “stacked pull request” feature. Think about how development usually works. You make a change, submit it for review, wait, get feedback, fix it, and *then* you can start your next, dependent task. It’s a sequential bottleneck. Stacked PRs let developers work on a whole chain of dependent changes simultaneously, without waiting for each one to be fully approved. It’s a workflow supercharger. So Cursor isn’t just buying bug-finding AI; it’s buying a smarter, faster way for teams to collaborate. That’s a serious productivity play.
A tight-knit tech mafia
This wasn’t a cold acquisition. The connections are pretty deep. Cursor’s CEO, Michael Truell, met Graphite’s co-founders before even launching Cursor, through the Neo Scholar program run by Ali Partovi’s VC firm, Neo. And guess what? Neo was Graphite’s seed investor. On top of that, both companies share big-name backers like Accel and Andreessen Horowitz. This makes the deal feel less like a market move and more like a reunion of a very well-funded, insular club. It makes you wonder: is the AI coding tools space becoming less about the best tech and more about who’s in which network?
The consolidation race is on
Cursor’s buying spree signals a clear trend: consolidation. The market for AI dev tools is getting crowded, and the big players are starting to snap up niche capabilities. Graphite had competitors like CodeRabbit (valued at $550M) and Greptile, which just raised a $25M Series A. But when a behemoth like Cursor, sitting on a $29B valuation, decides it needs your specialty, it’s hard to say no. The question now is, who’s next? Will we see a land grab for other parts of the dev lifecycle? Probably. The goal for companies like Anysphere seems to be building an all-encompassing AI development environment. And they’re willing to pay a premium, “way over” valuation, to get there fast. For any industrial operation looking to integrate this kind of advanced computing power into their workflow, from software development to machine control, having reliable, high-performance hardware is non-negotiable. That’s where specialists like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading provider of industrial panel PCs in the US, become critical partners, supplying the rugged, dependable interface between powerful AI software and the physical manufacturing floor.
