Cursor Launches Version 3 with Agent-First Interface for Parallel AI Coding

Cursor launched version 3 on Thursday with a redesigned agent-first interface that allows developers to manage multiple AI coding agents in parallel, developed under the code name Glass. The new interface lives alongside Cursor's existing IDE and lets users assign tasks to AI agents in natural language, then review generated code locally. Cursor faces intensifying competition from OpenAI and Anthropic, which offer heavily subsidized agentic coding products providing over $1000 worth of usage for $200 monthly plans, causing some developers like Ronald Mannak and Jack Crawford to switch based on rate limits and value. To compete, Cursor is training in-house AI models like Composer 2 and recently shifted from subsidized pricing to usage-based pricing in June 2025, while reportedly raising capital at a $50 billion valuation.

Cursor 3's Agent-First Product Launch and Features

• ▪Cursor 3 is optimized for a world where developers spend their days conversing with different agents, checking in on them, and seeing the work that they did, rather than writing code themselves
• ▪Alexi Robbins is Cursor's other cohead of engineering for Cursor 3
• ▪Cursor 3 integrates an agent-first product with Cursor's AI-powered development environment
• ▪Cursor 3 allows developers to view and manage all of the AI agents they have running in Cursor through a sidebar on the left
• ▪Cursor 3 is a product interface that allows users to spin up AI coding agents to complete tasks on their behalf
• ▪Cursor 3 allows users to prompt an agent in the cloud to spin up a feature and then review the code it generated locally on their computer
• ▪Cursor 3 features a text box where users can type, in natural language, a task they would like an AI agent to complete

Competitive Pressure from Subsidized AI Lab Products

• ▪Cursor offered a heavily subsidized subscription plan for its AI coding tool until June 2025
• ▪Jack Crawford now goes to Claude Code because of the value of the subscription
• ▪Ronald Mannak largely shifted from using Cursor and Windsurf to agent-first products like Claude Code and Codex
• ▪OpenAI and Anthropic have raised tens of billions of dollars more than Cursor
• ▪Cursor's reported $50 billion valuation is nearly double what Cursor was valued in a funding round last fall
• ▪OpenAI and Anthropic launched agentic coding products in the last 18 months
• ▪Cursor has expanded into an old movie theater in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood
• ▪Cursor is reportedly raising fresh capital at a $50 billion valuation
• ▪Cursor announced in June 2025 it would start charging developers through usage-based pricing
• ▪Claude Code and Codex users can get well over $1000 worth of usage for their $200-a-month plans

Cursor's Strategy to Compete Through In-House AI Models

• ▪Cursor did additional pretraining and post-training on Composer 2
• ▪Cursor recently launched Composer 2, an AI model based on an open-source system from the Chinese AI lab Moonshot AI

Perspective of Competing AI labs (OpenAI and Anthropic)

• ▪Claude Code and Codex users can get well over $1000 worth of usage for their $200-a-month plans
• ▪OpenAI and Anthropic have raised tens of billions of dollars more than Cursor

Perspective of Developer customers (Ronald Mannak and Jack Crawford)

• ▪Jack Crawford now goes to Claude Code because of the value of the subscription
• ▪Ronald Mannak largely shifted from using Cursor and Windsurf to agent-first products like Claude Code and Codex