Michael Truell, co-founder and CEO of AI code editor Cursor, discusses the company's growth and corporate development strategy with Andreessen Horowitz partner Martin Casado.
“I think increasingly in the future, you know, with the whole suite of products that are possible in our space and with the benefits we think of bundling those together, we're especially interested in earlier than most companies in their maturity using M&A as a strategic tool also to start to build out a couple of, like, GM-type structures within the company and add on complementary products.”
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More from Michael Truell
Opinion
Truell: Microsoft will struggle to compete in AI code editing
“I think it's one of the things that makes it pretty tricky for a Microsoft to really compete in a big way.”
Michael TruellNov 10, 2025▶ 26:58Michael Truell: How Cursor Builds at the Speed of AI
Insight
Truell: Public cloud providers are figuring out extreme scale on the fly
“You think of these public clouds as they have it all together but really it's a very small set of customers for the highest, highest level of scale, and they're figuring it out on the fly.”
Michael TruellNov 10, 2025▶ 15:14Michael Truell: How Cursor Builds at the Speed of AI
Opinion
Truell: Software engineering remains far from full automation
“Despite the headlines, despite how much demand there is in this market, and how much software's changed over the last few years, it's so far away from being automated. It's so inefficient. Building software in a professional setting, especially with, you know,…”
Michael TruellNov 10, 2025▶ 25:55Michael Truell: How Cursor Builds at the Speed of AI
Disclosure
Truell: Cursor originally built its IDE from scratch before forking VS Code
“We didn't even fork VS code. We actually built from scratch. So we built IDEA from scratch that we used ourselves as a daily driver. Couple more weeks to actually get into other people's hands. And then in the span of total, I think a couple of months, we had …”
Michael TruellNov 10, 2025▶ 7:57Michael Truell: How Cursor Builds at the Speed of AI
Disclosure
Truell: Cursor drives a high double-digit percentage of its API providers' revenue
“Their thing now comprises like a really high double-digit percent of their API revenue”
Michael TruellNov 10, 2025▶ 12:47Michael Truell: How Cursor Builds at the Speed of AI
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Truell: Cursor flew across the world to recruit candidates who rejected them
“Us growing the initial 10 people on the team, we did crazy recruiting stunts, like flying across the world to the person. Oh yeah. After they say no.”
Michael TruellNov 10, 2025▶ 0:00Michael Truell: How Cursor Builds at the Speed of AI
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