SAN FRANCISCO, April 22 -- SpaceX on Tuesday announced a partnership with AI coding company Cursor and said the alliance comes with an option to buy the startup for US$60 billion later this year.

The move by Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company comes as it prepares to become publicly traded, and shortly after it took over the billionaire's artificial intelligence outfit xAI.

Cursor, founded in 2022 and based in San Francisco, specialises in AI for creating software code, particularly for business uses.

"SpaceXAI and @cursor_ai are now working closely together to create the world's best coding and knowledge work AI," the company said in a post on X.

Combining Cursor's software and product expertise with SpaceX's "Colossus" AI train...