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Casado: Cursor rapidly self-cannibalized from an IDE to an agent and model platform

Martin Casado · How Cursor Built One of AI’s Fastest-Growing Companies · Aug 27, 2026 · at 19:06

a16z General Partner Martin Casado discusses how Cursor adapted to rapid advancements in frontier foundation models.

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“And I think another thing that the Cursor team probably doesn't get, you know, the level of credit for is to the extent they cannibalized themselves so dramatically in like a Reed Hastings type way in a matter of two years, right? So they were first an IDE, and then they, you know, moved to an agent platform, then they moved to a model platform”

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