Cursor’s 25-year-old CEO turned a Discord server into a talent pipeline

When SpaceX agreed to buy Cursor for $60 billion, it cemented Michael Truell’s status as one of Silicon Valley’s youngest breakout CEOs. The 25‑year‑old founder had already turned an AI coding project into a staple for enterprise developers and built a hiring funnel out of the community that grew up around it. That wasn’t obvious when he and three fellow programmers first started Anysphere (Cursor’s parent company) in early 2022, which Truell called the “prehistoric times” of AI in a keynote speech at Cursor’s inaugural Compile conference published Monday. At the time, Big Tech companies and well-funded labs were already developing AI coding tools, and the four founders, all in their early 20s, were wary of entering such a crowded field.