On December 19, 2025, Anysphere, the company behind the AI code editor “Cursor,” announced the acquisition of code review platform “Graphite”12. While the acquisition price was not disclosed, Axios reported that the deal exceeded Graphite’s most recent valuation of $290 million3.
This acquisition addresses the challenge that while AI has accelerated code creation, the review process has remained largely unchanged. Cursor CEO Michael Truell stated, “As AI has been deployed more broadly within engineering teams, the way engineering teams review code is increasingly becoming a bottleneck to them moving even faster”4.
What is Graphite?
Graphite is a startup founded approximately five years ago in New York by Merrill Lutsky, Tomas Reimers, and Greg Foster. Development began with the conviction that “the world’s best engineering teams needed better code review tools”1.
The company’s flagship feature, “Stacked PRs,” enables developers to work on multiple interdependent pull requests in parallel. In traditional development workflows, engineers had to wait for one PR to be approved before starting dependent work, but this feature eliminates that bottleneck.
Additionally, Graphite offers “Merge Queue” for automatic PR organization and processing, “Graphite Agent” (formerly Diamond) for AI-powered code review, and “PR Inbox” for managing all pull requests in a unified view1.
Customer Base and Growth
Graphite is used by over 500 companies, with tens of thousands of engineers using it daily. Major customers include Shopify, Snowflake, Figma, Robinhood, Ramp, and Perplexity AI14.
Revenue grew 20x in 2024, and the company raised $52 million in a Series B round in March 2025, at a valuation of $290 million34.
Background of the Acquisition
While Cursor has accelerated AI-powered code creation over the past two and a half years, the review process has remained essentially unchanged for three years. CEO Truell explained the acquisition rationale: “We focused on the writing side of things. Graphite has focused on the review side of things. We think the two together can make something even better”4.
Furthermore, AI-generated code often still contains bugs, and developers spend considerable time on corrections. Cursor already has a code review feature called Bugbot, but the integration with Graphite’s specialized code review technology aims to strengthen their response to this challenge5.
Future Integration Plans
Both companies are planning a phased integration. In the short term, Graphite will maintain its independent brand, team, and product, continuing its current services12.
From 2026 onwards, they plan to develop tighter integration between local development and pull requests, as well as smarter code review features that learn from both systems. Graphite CEO Lutsky stated they aim to create “an integrated platform where humans and AI agents collaborate to create, review, and merge code”1.
Cursor’s Scale
Cursor was founded in 2022 by four MIT graduates. As of November 2025, the company is valued at $29.3 billion with annual recurring revenue (ARR) exceeding $1 billion35.
The Graphite acquisition marks the company’s third acquisition. In November 2024, they acquired AI coding assistant Supermaven, and in July 2025, they acquired talent from enterprise startup Koala5.
Market Impact
The AI coding market continues to grow, with the U.S. market projected to expand from $1.51 billion in 2024 to approximately $9 billion by 2032. Microsoft and Google reportedly generate 25-30% of new code using AI4.
With this acquisition, Cursor expands into a platform covering the entire development lifecycle from code creation to review and merge. Competing AI code review tools include CodeRabbit (valued at $550 million) and Greptile (raised $25 million in Series A), and competition in this space is intensifying5.
For more details about both Cursor and Graphite products, visit their respective official websites.
Sources
- Building the future of software development with Cursor - Graphite Official Blog
- Graphite is joining Cursor - Cursor Official Blog
- Scoop: Cursor buys code review platform Graphite - Axios
- Cursor acquires code review startup Graphite - Fortune
- Cursor continues acquisition spree with Graphite deal - TechCrunch