Cursor, the artificial intelligence (AI) coding assistant valued at $29 billion, has acquired code review startup Graphite to address what Cursor CEO Michael Truell describes as a growing bottleneck in software development.
The companies declined to disclose financial terms but confirmed the transaction involves a mix of cash and equity.
While AI has dramatically accelerated code writing, the review process has remained largely unchanged, consuming an increasing portion of engineering teams’ time.
“Over the past 2.5 years, Cursor has made it much faster to write production code,” Truell said in a statement. “However, for most engineering teams, reviewing code looks the same as it did three years ago.”
Graphite, founded nearly five years ago, raised $52 million in a Series B round in March. The startup serves tens of thousands of engineers at more than 500 companies, including Shopify Inc., Snowflake Inc., Figma, and Perplexity AI.
The accord brings together complementary tools in the AI development workflow. Cursor helps programmers write code through natural language prompts and intelligent suggestions; Graphite specializes in reviewing those changes and determining when code is ready to ship.
A key feature of Graphite’s platform is “stacked diffs,” which lets developers submit code for review and immediately begin working on the next module rather than waiting for approval. This eliminates traditional bottlenecks where engineers must wait for one piece of code to be reviewed before starting dependent work.
Graphite’s AI-powered review tool also catches cybersecurity vulnerabilities, performance issues, and ensures code complies with company-specific formatting guidelines and documentation requirements. The platform provides customizable dashboards and keyboard shortcuts to speed up the review workflow.
Both products will continue operating independently in the near term, with deeper integrations planned throughout 2026. Lutsky emphasized that Graphite’s brand and product aren’t going anywhere, but the company now has significantly greater resources to enhance its offerings.
The deal comes just one month after Cursor announced it had reached $1 billion in annualized revenue and marks the company’s third acquisition. Cursor previously bought AI coding assistant Supermaven in November 2024 and acquired talent from enterprise startup Koala in July.
The acquisition positions Cursor aggressively in an increasingly competitive market dominated by OpenAI, Anthropic, and GitHub Copilot. However, Truell downplayed concerns about competition from major AI labs, noting that Cursor’s strategy focuses on combining the best available models with proprietary technology and superior user interface design.
Looking ahead, Truell said the company has no immediate plans for additional acquisitions or an IPO, instead focusing on product development as it pursues its ambitious vision for the next decade of automated coding.
