The AI startup Cursor, now officially a subsidiary of SpaceXAI, launched Origin this week. This new code hosting platform is designed to replicate GitHub's core developer functionalities, allowing users to browse and edit codebases collaboratively, handle pull requests, and store repositories.
Cursor also revealed that "agent native" features will soon be available for Origin. Additionally, the company is building a wider app ecosystem to support broader coding efforts within the new platform.
Ironically, on the exact day Cursor debuted Origin, GitHub suffered a lengthy worldwide outage. For over six hours, the site’s functions were heavily degraded, triggering a nearly 20 percent error rate globally. Zooming out, the platform has endured 257 outages over the past year, according to a recent analysis by LeadDev. Such persistent availability problems have sparked ongoing frustration, leading to a visible exodus of high-profile users from the Microsoft-owned platform.
Cursor's Rapid Expansion
Michael Truell and three fellow MIT dropouts originally founded Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, in 2022. When they first started, early skeptics questioned why they would build a programming application when artificial general intelligence was predicted to wipe out the field by 2024 or 2025.
Instead, the startup amassed a cult following for popularizing "vibe coding," a natural language approach to software development. Fast forward to 2026, and Cursor has surged past 1 million daily active users while expanding its headcount to 300 employees. The startup saw its flagship product hit $1 million in annualized revenue in October 2025 before rocketing past the $2 billion mark in early 2026.
To manage surging corporate demand, Cursor recently opened a New York office and integrated its tools with the enterprise software platform Salesforce. The company has also updated its AI agents to run in parallel on cloud-based virtual machines, ensuring they do not compete for resources on a developer's local laptop. These updated agents can now test their own changes and record their work via videos, logs, and screenshots.
While Cursor is built on top of Microsoft's open-source Visual Studio Code and taps into external models like Google Gemini, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, and OpenAI's GPT-4o, the company continues to push its own proprietary technology. Facing mounting market pressure, the company introduced its own LLM, Composer, and has rolled out a steady stream of upgrades since October 2025.
Most recently, Anysphere officially unveiled Bugbot, a specialized tool engineered to automatically spot code errors and save vibe coders from themselves. Bugbot integrates directly with GitHub to flag mistakes introduced by fast-moving AI coding agents, which can often generate errors that are difficult for humans to untangle.
The Broader AI Coding Race
Despite these new challengers, GitHub—founded in 2007 and acquired by Microsoft in 2012—continues to reign as the world's largest source code host. According to the company's internal metrics, roughly 180 million developers used the platform as of October 2025. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also noted last October that its flagship AI tool, GitHub Copilot, boasted more than 26 million users.
However, the competitive landscape is increasingly crowded with fast-growth contenders like Replit, Lovable, Windsurf, and Poolside, alongside open-source alternatives like Cline. Sector competition remains fierce across the board. As of February 2026, Anthropic's Claude Code has grown to over $2.5 billion in run-rate revenue, while OpenAI's Codex has surpassed 1.5 million weekly active users.