SpaceX Takes Off, Cursor's Wild Rise, Snap Bets on AR Glasses | Diet TBPN

Summary

TBPN Diet – June 17, 2026

Episode Title: SpaceX Takes Off, Cursor's Wild Rise, Snap Bets on AR Glasses

---

Overview

This episode centers on three major topics gripping Silicon Valley:

1. SpaceX’s meteoric rise in market cap and its landmark acquisition of Cursor, a leading AI company
2. Cursor’s journey and its significance in the fast-changing AI ecosystem
3. Snap’s new AR smartglasses (“Snap Specs”) and their implications for consumer tech

Throughout, hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays blend live reactions to late-breaking news, insider investor commentary, and real-world analogies to highlight the unprecedented scale and speed of today’s tech headlines.

---

Major Discussion Points

1. SpaceX’s Explosive Growth & Cursor Acquisition

[00:00–04:00]

• SpaceX’s After-Hours Surge:
  Hosts react to SpaceX’s rapid rise in valuation, noting its jarring ascent to become one of the world’s top five companies by market cap, nearly tying with Microsoft at just under $3 trillion.
  • “I kept getting push notifications and thinking that can't be right.” – John Coogan [00:01]
• Cursor Deal as a Gamechanger:
  With SpaceX’s market cap quadrupled, its $60B Cursor acquisition now seems insignificant relative to company value—potentially even “free.”
  • “It basically makes their Cursor acquisition free.” – Jordi Hays [00:37]
• Historic Context:
  The acquisition sets a record for the largest VC-backed M&A event ever, as noted by industry commentator Ian Bremmer:
  • “We’ve seen the biggest VC backed IPO ever and the biggest VC backed strategic sale ever… 60 billion is beyond a home run and it happened in an M and A, which is crazy.” – Jordi quoting Bremmer [01:57]
• Retail Investor Dynamics:
  Many retail investors are likely unfamiliar with Cursor, but will now have exposure through SpaceX. The acquisition is viewed as extremely bullish.

2. The Broader M&A and Tech Landscape

[03:00–06:00]

• IPO Pump & M&A Strategy:
  The hosts debate if this is the start of a new acquisition spree for SpaceX, diverging from Elon Musk’s typical “build, not buy” approach.
  • “There are companies—Meta is very acquisitive. Google, Apple… But if we're seeing one deal a month… that would be a completely different operating philosophy.” – John Coogan [03:45]
• Cursor’s Wild Market Ride:
  Details from Business Insider: Cursor once represented up to half of Anthropic’s revenue, but the ecosystem pivoted wildly as LLMs and SaaS companies came to dominate model offerings.
  • “Cursor once made up 40 to 50% of Anthropic's revenue. That is a crazy gyration in the market.” – John Coogan [04:00]
• Owning the End User:
  Anthropic’s switch from working with Cursor to building its own solutions echoes big tech's broader “customer relationship ownership” arms race.

3. Reflections on Valuations & Market Mania

[06:10–08:30]

• Spectacular Wealth Creation:
  The hosts muse about the immense, almost cartoonish sums involved.
  • “Elon made more money than Warren Buffett made in his entire career.” – John Coogan referencing Ryan Peterson [06:10]
• Market Volatility:
  The massive swings in SpaceX's valuation—up 20% in a day, 14% after hours—portend equally dramatic down days.
  • “He lost more money than Brazil makes in a trillion years… whenever the big numbers get contextualized, it’s always very entertaining.” – Jordi Hays [06:45]
• Price to Sales Comparisons:
  SpaceX is trading at 150x sales; for context, Amazon is 3.6x, Microsoft is 9x.
  • “People read this as a bearish SpaceX take. But imagine if Amazon started trading at SpaceX's price to sales…” – Jordi Hays [08:15]

4. Snap’s Big AR Glasses Bet

[08:27–14:00]

• Product Launch Details:
  Snap Specs are official at $2,195—a striking price point, dubbed by CEO Evan Spiegel as “the next computer.”
  • “$2,200. That's almost Apple Vision Pro numbers. That's expensive.” – Jordi Hays [08:38]
• Comparisons & Demos:
  The hosts discuss the specs’ weight (132g vs. 580g for HoloLens, 70g for Meta Ray-Bans), battery life, and whether anyone would give up their phone for a week to test drive them.
  • “If we traded you your phone for a pair of these, would you demo them for a week? No phone. Would you commit?” – John Coogan [09:43]
  • “I could do a week!” – Tyler [12:29] (guest)
• Ecosystem Challenges:
  Meta’s success with Ray-Ban sunglasses hinges on their lower price and gifting appeal, while Snap and Apple face the challenge of winning mainstream consumers at premium prices.
  • “When you're talking about a new company entering hardware… Meta did a better job… a couple hundred extra bucks, it's still something you could give as a gift.” – Jordi Hays [11:17]
• Wearability vs. Capability:
  Snap seeks to bridge a gap between “clunky, super capable” headsets and “lightweight, do-nothing” glasses, but developer buy-in and killer use cases are needed for success.
  • “Spiegel called the specs both very, very wearable and highly capable… opportunity in a marketplace that’s focused on either very large and clunky headsets that are super capable or very lightweight glasses that really don’t do much.” – Jordi Hays [12:55]

5. Social Media & Meta Discussion

[14:20–16:24]

• Social Media Age Restrictions:
  Brief aside on a proposal to ban social media for over-65’s, the inverse of under-16 bans being tested in the UK.
  • “The purchasing power from 65 onward is so high. There’s so much wealth with the boomer generation; that would actually be very devastating to Facebook…” – Jordi Hays [14:25]
• Investor Eyeballs on Meta:
  Despite grumbling from some large advertisers, Meta delivers scale unmatched in digital advertising.
  • “Don’t doubt the Zuck… as a large customer… Meta is working and no ad space comes close to their level of scale.” – John Coogan quoting Sean Frank [15:22]
  • “The fact that you could have one SpaceX or two Metas for the same price is pretty unbelievable…” – John Coogan [15:50]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We’ve never had an M and A of a VC backed company, young startup, north of $50 billion. Like $60 billion is so, so big…” – Jordi Hays [01:56]
• “Cursor once made up 40 to 50% of Anthropic's revenue… it just shows you how quickly things are changing.” – John Coogan [04:00]
• “Elon made more money than Warren Buffett made in his entire career.” – John Coogan quoting Ryan Peterson [06:10]
• “Snap specs are official. $2,195. All-in-one AR glasses that Evan Spiegel has dubbed the next computer.” – John Coogan [08:27]
• “Spiegel called the specs both very, very wearable and highly capable…” – Jordi Hays [12:55]
• “Don’t doubt the Zuck… Meta is working and no ad space comes close to their level of scale.” – John Coogan [15:22]

---

Key Timelines & Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | Key Topics | |-----------|-------------------------------------|----------------------------------------| | 00:00-03:00 | SpaceX valuation & Cursor deal | Market cap, acquisition mechanics | | 03:00-06:00 | Changing tech M&A landscape | Buy vs build, Anthropic-Cursor dynamic | | 06:10-08:30 | Tech stock valuations, market mania | Wealth generation, volatility | | 08:27-14:00 | Snap AR Glasses launch | Product specs, market comparison | | 14:20-16:24 | Social media and Meta | Demographics, ad scale, investor takes |

---

Final Thoughts

This episode showcases a tech market moving at breakneck speed, where trillion-dollar companies make unprecedented deals overnight, and hardware launches attempt to change how we relate to digital realities. The hosts’ mixture of disbelief, deep knowledge, and irreverent humor make for a lively exploration of modern Silicon Valley obsessions.

Transcript

[A]

The big news is that SpaceX ran like absolute crazy after hours last night. I kept getting push notifications and thinking that can't be right. And then I would double click in check a little bit and I would

[B]

say, yeah, the headlines are crazy.

[A]

So yeah, so the big one is

[B]

there's so many of. It's just like it's passing this company, passing this company, passing that company. And you're like, whoa, this is a crazy, crazy time.

[A]

So SpaceX bigger than comfortably in the top five company.

[B]

You got Nvidia at five trillion. Alphabet and Apple right around four, four and a half. Then Microsoft and SpaceX neck and neck just shy of $3 trillion. And it basically makes their cursor acquisition free. They paid 60 billion in new stock for the company and their market cap. SpaceX's market cap more than quadrupled and added more than 4xed the price of a Cursor acquisition.

[A]

I believe they had until Q4 to actually pull trigger on the Cursor deal. Like they built in a window. I bet you there was some terms that weren't public that Cursor would have wanted to make sure that they got in as quickly as possible.

[B]

Sure, sure.

[A]

If the stock's running really well, who knows where SpaceX will net out. I thought we'd be at 2.4 trillion by the middle, by basically the last hour of trading on Friday. I was incorrect at the time, but it's obviously continued to run. There was another scenario where SpaceX could have effectively acquired Cursor at an even higher valuation. But I think it's a great, fantastic outcome for the cursor team. Obviously OpenAI is a big cursor investor. Thrive A16Z, CO2 and others that, that I'm unfortunately forgetting. But what was Bremmer saying about this?

[B]

He said it's the biggest. In the past five days we've seen the biggest VC backed IPO ever and the biggest VC backed strategic sale ever. We've never had an M and a of a VC backed company. Young startup, north of 50 billion. Like 60 billion is so, so big we sort of lose sight of it because we're talking about a trillion dollars for this company, 3 trillion for that company. But 60 billion is beyond a home run and it happened in an M and A, which is crazy.

[A]

And there's, I would assume, a large number of the retail investors investing in SpaceX. We're not necessarily even that familiar with cursor up until today. I did see that if you're waking up today, you're like wait, SpaceX just acquired one of the hottest AI companies in the world with billions of dollars in revenue. This is so bullish. Obviously, a lot of the more institutional investors or people that had been following the company privately were well aware that they had the option to do this, that they would almost certainly take it.

[B]

The takes are all over the timeline. Quinn Thompson says, this is brilliant corporate finance. Use your newly printed low float retail inflated currency to acquire real businesses ahead of the lockup, expiring probably the most creative, accretive way to sell as much equity as possible into IPO pump. I wonder what acquisition is next. Very interesting. Nick Carter fights back, fires back and says, you'd think the people buying the equity would also be aware of this. And that's a good point. But the question is like, are there more acquisitions in the pipeline? Because Tesla has not done a lot of acquisitions. Elon's always been a build, not buy

[A]

operator or founder, but Tesla itself.

[B]

Yeah, that's a very different scenario. What I'm talking about is like there, there are companies, Meta is very acquisitive. Google, Apple. Apple's like on the smaller side, but they still deals more frequently. It would be very interesting if we're seeing one deal a month and he's sort of putting together the pieces of buying up Neo Labs and compute capacity and Neo Clouds and rolling everything up. That would just be a completely different operating philosophy. But given where the stock is, given how smooth this deal went and where the market cap of SpaceX is, it's not the craziest thing. It would be a big pivot in his, in his strategy though. Business Insider has a deep dive on Cursor's wild ride. Michael Truol didn't pay himself for years. Interestingly, Cursor once made up 40 to 50% of Anthropic's revenue. That is a crazy gyration in the market. Just shows you how quickly things are changing. Went from, you know, it's all Cursor, that that business is just funneling to Cursor. Cursor's the front door to this business. Then it's like, oh, it's all these hyperscalers that are spending a billion dollars, half a billion dollars a month. And so the who the whole landscape is changing. Nothing tells that more than Anthropic telling Cursor that Claude Code was just a research effort. This goes back to the Dylan field. Like, were they consistently candid? Or maybe they really just did think, hey, yeah, this is just a research effort. Like you do you. And then Realized later like, whoa, whoa, we need to be a player in this. We cannot be in the middle of this situation. So we got to do our own thing.

[A]

Owning the end customer relationship.

[B]

Yeah. And so wild, Wild ride.

[A]

Yeah. Similar. Similar to, I think the messaging to figma Canva around Anthropic's design tool.

[B]

Yeah, it's tricky. Every AI company is. It's a general use technology. They're using it for everything. There's questions about like, will you maintain value if you're in the token path, do you need to be like, do not build a company that depends on the models getting better. But if the models get really, really good, like what can't they do? And so constantly we see every company competing with every other company. As you know, every hyperscaler has an LLM at this point and every SaaS product has other products because they can launch features faster. And so the competition is heating up across all these different companies.

[A]

Next time we have Michael on the show. Yeah, we got to ask how he paid the bills for all those years.

[B]

Crashing on couches or something.

[A]

Got to ask. Taking out massive loans against the company, maybe. Ryan Peterson says with yesterday's 20% SpaceX Pop, Elon made more money than Warren Buffett made in his entire, entire career.

[B]

These headlines are going to get crazy because, I mean, I see some of them getting community noted, but it's like a single day will move more than like all of Bill Gates's, Kern's, Net worth, that type of thing. Those headlines are going to pop off consistently. The crazy one is like, there's going to be down days. Like there's going to be just random.

[A]

Elon lost more money today than any person in industry combined.

[B]

He lost more money than Brazil makes in a trillion years. You know, and because like whenever the big numbers get contextualized, it's always very entertaining. It was up another 14% after hours though. But the numbers are staggering. When you're in the $1 trillion club,

[A]

JB says, is this everyone's first IPO? It's silly. Now as it approaches Amazon valuation, well, we passed that. But the float is low until the lockup of nearly every retail investor on earth wants to be involved, you're going to get stupid moves. Then the float opens up and all the retail people are stuck for years.

[B]

What does that mean?

[A]

Just say you haven't seen the mass driver demo buddy or the next data center.

[B]

I mean, that's the really interesting thing. With cursor, there's all this debate over, like they have a deal With Anthropic, they have a deal with Google. Cursor obviously wants to compute, but talking to Gavin Baker, it sounds like there might be a lot more terrestrial compute coming online in the very short term and that is valuable. They're monetizing this very effectively. And so you could see a short term revenue ramp just driven from sort of the boring Neo cloud stuff. Stuff that monetizes really well and then that provides, you know, it's like the Model 3. It's, it's, it's going to be the economic engine that provides the capital for data centers in space, mass driver on the moon. All that stuff needs fuel for the Fire.

[A]

Anyway, A.T. ludlow has some data. SpaceX, the current approximate price to sales is 150x. Amazon is 3.6. Microsoft 9.0.

[B]

See people read this as a bearish SpaceX take. But imagine if Amazon started trading at SpaceX's price to sales.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Be probably like a hundred trillion dollar company. This is from Evans Beagle. Yes.

[A]

And the Germany reported Snap specs are official. $2,195 all in one AR glasses that Evan Spiegel has dubbed the next computer.

[B]

$2,200. That's almost Apple Vision Pro numbers. That's expensive. It's going to be a lift. I feel like it's a lot, it seems like a lot of money. It's got to be.

[A]

Apple Vision Pro starts at $3,499. So a bit of a jump. But this is a product that seemingly is trying to compete in the realm of like a mobile device. It's naturally a mobile device. Unlike the Apple Vision Pro, which obviously some viral images on launch of people walking around with it.

[B]

I'm just thinking about like there are a lot of Apple fanboys who buy every.

[A]

Get this.

[B]

What?

[A]

Get this guy on right now.

[B]

What?

[A]

Pull him up.

[B]

Hey, what do you think? Are you buying the snap specs? $2,200. Are you spending your paycheck on that?

[C]

I mean I think they actually do look really cool. I don't know. Like I was looking at some of the product demos earlier. Some like the game features look really cool. There's like ping pong.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

2.2.2k is like a little pricey personally

[B]

but if you can watch Lawrence Arabia, we bought this.

[A]

If we bought it. If we traded you your phone for a pair of these, would you, would you demo them for a week? No phone. Would you commit?

[C]

Do you like texting on it? Can you call? You don't need it.

[A]

You can go without Texting for.

[B]

You have Lawrence of Arabia you don't need.

[C]

That's true. I can watch Lawrence Arabia like, you

[A]

know, what's the battery show?

[B]

Snap. Specs. Battery life. Specs. Battery life. I gotta. I gotta.

[A]

So what happened? Wasn't there some conversation that specs might spin out up to four hours?

[B]

That's Lords of Ravia right there with a little intermission.

[A]

If I remember correctly, there was some, like, rumors that. That specs would be spun out. I remember at least one article that has not happened.

[B]

I don't think so.

[A]

And so the stock is down 7% today.

[B]

I don't know. The trick is that you have Apple fanboys who. They have a lot of Apple fans, but some of them are wealthy. Some of them buy every product. They buy a new iPhone every year. They buy the top of the Line MacBook. They have the Mac Studio and the Mac Mini just for fun. And that's a whole class of consumer for Apple. And so when they come in with something that's a little crazy, like a $10,000 gold Apple Watch, like, they'll sell a couple of them. When they come in with a $3,000 VR headset, like, a couple people will just be like, yeah, I'll give it a try. When you're talking about a new company entering hardware, Meta, I think did a better job coming in with like, yeah, it's just a pair of sunglasses. You need a pair of sunglasses anywhere.

[A]

Anyway, put a camera in it.

[B]

We put a camera in it. It's $100. For the version that you know and love, the Ray Ban Wayfarers that don't have a camera in them, a couple hundred extra bucks, it's still something you could give as a gift.

[A]

And then I can afford to lose money on every single device effectively forever.

[B]

Totally. Yeah. And so it's a lot easier to get into that meta ecosystem. Just saying, yeah, throw a camera on my Ray Bans. I'll give it a try. Maybe I'll churn. But if it's collecting dust in the cabinet or in the sock drawer, you're a lot less like, ah, I really got burned. And like, the Apple fanboys, a lot of them took them back, but they're like, yeah, that was still, like a cool experiment. Some, except me.

[A]

Well, Tyler, once you're back in town.

[B]

Wait, what was that?

[C]

Lord of the Rings extended cut. I think that's.

[B]

Is that over four hours? You can't watch the whole thing.

[A]

Let's do this. Once you're back in town, let's pick up A pair. Tyler can live with them. We won't say a week. We'll say 48 hours. Exclusively, exclusive. You're everything we take.

[B]

I think you need the phone to do anything. I think a lot of the compute happens.

[C]

48 hours, I think, is actually, like, not very hard.

[B]

That's just a digital detail.

[A]

And then you're One weekend, you're down.

[C]

I could do a week. I could do a week.

[B]

That's like 10 showings of Lawrence.

[A]

I'm not asking you to do a week. If you want to do a week, we can do it. Okay. He's doing it.

[B]

I'm here in four weeks. I'm here in a full month now.

[C]

Four weeks.

[A]

All right. It was great to see you, Tyler. We miss you.

[B]

Great to see you. Ultradome's not the same without you.

[A]

Yeah, it really is. John and I were kind of messing around, kind of quiet in here, and we realized when Tyler's not here, there's nobody super close by to laugh at our bad jokes.

[B]

Yeah. Spiegel called the specs both very, very wearable and highly capable, which he said gives Snap an opportunity in a marketplace that's focused on either very large and clunky headsets that are super capable or very lightweight glasses that really don't do much. So it is interesting. I was reading the coverage in. There's some videos here in Upload VR, and it shows sort of the process of this. The HoloLens one from Microsoft 2016 was 580 grams. Snapsbacks are 132 grams. So they are light. Now, the Meta Ray ban display is 70 grams, so about half as heavy. So these are heavier, but they're nowhere as heavy as a HoloLens or a real VR headset. And it checks a lot of the boxes on field of view, and we'll see what the developer ecosystem's like. I hope someone comes up with some interesting thing. I hope that there's a YC company that builds on top of this exclusively and has some sort of breakthrough user interface experience, some killer use case that comes from the community. Yeah.

[A]

Gotta wait to see how many of these sell.

[B]

Yes, that will be. That will be very need.

[A]

I mean, even with a million sold, it's not a very big user base.

[B]

It's a lot of money. Let me tell you about Codex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents. Whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content, or automating business workflows, Codex helps you move projects forward from start over

[A]

on X. Daniel's advocating for banning social media for over 65s.

[B]

Yes, yes. The inverse of the UK's project or the UK's initiative to ban social media for under 16 over 65. I think that would ruffle some feathers that would probably be pushed back on more by the social media companies because the purchasing power from 65 onward is so high. There's so much wealth with the boomer generation that would actually be very devastating to Facebook and YouTube and TikTok, even the young folks. I think all the social media companies have an incentive to get those users as early as possible, keep them on the platform. But I think more than anything, they want a level playing field. So Connor Hayes can duke it out with every other social media site as soon as someone turns 16, try and acquire them, try and get them on board. But. But we'll see as that rolls out and where the guardrails are set.

[A]

John Frank Everyone is doubting Meta spenders are mad at bugs and model changes. Investors think they're missing AI like the AR saga all over again. But as a large ish customer who will spend something like $100 million with them this year, Meta is working and no ad space comes close to their level of scale. Don't doubt the Zuck. The fact that you can buy that you could have one SpaceX or two Metas for the same price is pretty unbelievable and certainly not something that most people would have guessed even a year ago.

[B]

Yeah, it is a crazy, crazy situation. At the same time, rockets, they're inspiring. And social media is sort of totally,

[A]

I mean, I can see what we got here, but it's still surprising.

[B]

But yeah, obviously fantastic business. And yeah, people, I probably need to, you know, reality check with Sean Frank because he's in the trenches. He understands the business better than most. So thank you for tuning into TBPN today.

[A]

It's been an honor and a Privilege.

[B]

Leave us 5 stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Sign up for our newsletter tvpn.com we'll see you tomorrow. Goodbye.

[A]

Cheers.