SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor on August 14, 2026. Three days later, Cursor launched Origin — a GitHub-alternative code hosting platform — rolled out by default to every paid Pro, Teams, and Enterprise account. If you haven’t touched your Cursor settings since the acquisition closed, your code custody, data policies, and model routing may not look the way you think they do.
This guide covers five concrete checks every Cursor user should run right now. They apply whether you’re an individual developer on a Pro plan or an engineering lead responsible for a team with proprietary IP and regulatory obligations.
What You’ll Need Before Starting
To complete this audit, you need Cursor Pro, Teams, or Enterprise access. Enterprise or Teams users need workspace admin or owner privileges to change org-wide settings. Individual Pro users can audit and correct their own configuration but cannot enforce settings across a team. The checks below take roughly 30 minutes end to end.
These steps are additive: completing all five gives you the clearest picture. But if you only have ten minutes, prioritize Steps 1 and 2 — Origin enrollment and Privacy Mode are the highest-stakes surfaces.
Step 1: Check Your Origin Enrollment Status
Origin is the most consequential change from the acquisition period. The platform launched August 17 and enrolled all paid users by default — with one exception: enterprise organizations whose administrators explicitly opted out beforehand. If you did not opt out before August 17, you are likely enrolled.
To verify your enrollment status: open the Cursor desktop client and look for a “Codebase” tab in the left sidebar. If it’s present, Origin is active on your account. You can also navigate to cursor.com/codebase while signed in — if you see a repository listing interface rather than a coming-soon page, you are enrolled.
The data concern with Origin is specific and worth stating precisely. Cursor’s existing Privacy and Data Governance documentation distinguishes between two kinds of code exposure: code transmitted through the editor for inference, and code stored on Cursor’s servers as the repository host. Privacy Mode settings — covered in Step 2 — govern the former. No published terms currently govern the latter. As of August 18, 2026, Cursor has not published data retention terms, subprocessor disclosures, or training-use policies specific to code hosted natively on Origin.
What to Do Right Now
If your codebase contains proprietary algorithms, customer PII in test fixtures, credentials in commit history, or code with regulatory exposure under HIPAA, SOC 2, or GDPR: use Origin in mirror mode only until terms are published. Mirror mode syncs a GitHub repository into Origin for browsing and agent context while keeping GitHub as the canonical source of truth. Pushes continue going to GitHub. Your primary data custody relationship stays with GitHub under GitHub’s published enterprise terms.
To set up mirror mode: Origin → Add Repository → Mirror from GitHub. Do not select “Migrate to Origin-native” — that transfers custody to Cursor’s infrastructure.
For enterprise administrators who want to disable Origin entirely until data terms are published: Admin Console → Features → Origin → Disable for organization. This removes the Codebase tab from all team member clients immediately.
Step 2: Verify Your Privacy Mode Settings
Privacy Mode is Cursor’s primary control over whether your code flows into model training. It exists in two variants, and the default depends on your plan tier — which matters significantly under the new ownership structure.
| Plan | Privacy Mode Default | What It Means |
|---|---|---|
| Pro (individual) | Off | Cursor may store codebase data, prompts, and editor actions to train models and improve features |
| Teams | Off | Same as Pro; admin can enforce org-wide override |
| Enterprise | On | Zero data retention; code not used for training |
The acquisition makes this setting more consequential than it was before June. Cursor’s data-use page now lists SpaceXAI alongside OpenAI and Anthropic as the providers whose documentation governs retention practices for session data. Cursor editor session data was reported to have fed Grok 4.5 training as of June 2026 — before the acquisition formally closed on August 14.
How to Check and Change Your Setting
Individual: Settings → Cursor → Privacy Mode → toggle to On. Enabling Privacy Mode instructs Cursor and its model providers to apply zero data retention to your inference requests.
Teams and Enterprise admins: Admin Console → Policies → “Require Privacy Mode” → Enable. This enforces Privacy Mode for every seat in your organization and prevents individual members from disabling it. After enabling, verify enforcement is active by checking a member account — the toggle should appear greyed out with a label indicating admin control.
There is also a “Privacy Mode (Legacy)” setting visible in some client versions. Legacy is stricter: it instructs model providers to apply zero retention even for providers that have their own looser defaults. If your organization has GDPR obligations or handles data under contractual data processing agreements, Privacy Mode (Legacy) is worth enabling.
One important limitation: Privacy Mode governs inference requests made through the editor. It does not automatically govern code stored on Origin’s hosting infrastructure. Steps 1 and 2 address different surfaces — you need both.
Step 3: Review Model Routing Configuration
As of acquisition close, Cursor continues to route requests to Anthropic’s Claude models, OpenAI’s GPT models, and Cursor’s own Composer models. SpaceX has not announced changes to these partnerships. The concern is forward-looking: SpaceX’s ownership of xAI creates structural incentives to shift default routing toward Grok over time, and there is no contractual commitment to maintain current routing options.
Cursor Router — shipped July 22, 2026 — is the current control surface. It automatically selects the underlying model for each request based on task type and the selected optimization mode. Admins can restrict which models members may reach, set default routing modes, and enforce soft or hard limits across the organization.
How to Audit Your Current Routing
To see which models are currently reachable in your workspace: Settings → Models → View active model list. Note whether any Grok model variants appear and in what position in the priority list. If “Auto” routing is enabled, Cursor Router may select Grok for certain request types without surfacing that selection to the user.
For individual developers who want explicit control: disable Auto mode and select your preferred model directly. Claude Sonnet 5, Claude Opus 5, and GPT-5.6 Sol remain directly selectable as of late August 2026.
For team admins: Admin Console → Models → Router Settings → “Allow or block underlying models.” You can create a block rule for any Grok model variant if your organization has a policy against routing to xAI inference infrastructure. The block applies organization-wide across all optimization modes.
Note the scope: model routing governs inference — what model processes your prompt and receives your code context. It does not govern code stored on Origin (Step 1) or session telemetry at the editor level (Step 2). All three surfaces are distinct.
Step 4: Inventory Your .cursorignore Coverage
A .cursorignore file works like .gitignore — it tells Cursor’s context indexing and agents which files and directories to exclude from AI processing entirely. If your codebase has grown or changed significantly since you last reviewed it, your .cursorignore may have gaps that expose sensitive files to inference.
File types to prioritize in any .cursorignore audit:
- Credentials and secrets:
.env,.env.*,*.pem,*.key,secrets.json, any file matching*credentials*or*secret* - Test fixtures with real data:
tests/fixtures/directories containing production exports or real user records;test/data/with PII - Infrastructure configuration: Terraform state files (
*.tfstate,*.tfstate.backup), Kubernetes secrets manifests, Helm values files with embedded passwords - Build artifacts:
dist/andbuild/directories, particularly if your build process embeds API keys or tokens - Proprietary algorithm directories: Any folder containing core IP that should not enter external inference pipelines regardless of data policy settings
To run a quick gap check in your project root:
# Find .env files not yet in .cursorignore
find . -name ".env" -o -name ".env.*" | grep -v node_modules | grep -v ".git"
# Find .pem and .key files
find . -name "*.pem" -o -name "*.key" | grep -v node_modules
# Review your current .cursorignore
cat .cursorignoreCompare the output of the first two commands against your .cursorignore content. Any match not covered by an existing ignore rule is a gap. As we covered in our analysis of AI coding agents as an attack surface, the data flows inherent in cloud-hosted AI tooling create exposure vectors that a well-maintained .cursorignore substantially reduces.
Step 5: Assess Whether Your Stack Still Fits
For most developers, the four steps above will surface a manageable set of adjustments: flip Privacy Mode on, use Origin in mirror mode, block Grok in the router if your policy requires it, and patch your .cursorignore. That is a defensible posture under the current information.
But for organizations with strict data sovereignty requirements, highly sensitive IP, or regulatory environments where vendor ownership changes trigger internal review, the acquisition may have moved Cursor outside acceptable boundaries. Here is where the major alternatives stand as of late August 2026.
| Tool | Type | SWE-bench Verified | Data Custody | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Code | Terminal agent | 80.8% | Anthropic; no third-party | Complex multi-file agentic tasks |
| GitHub Copilot | Editor extension (VS Code, JetBrains) | ~55% (agent mode) | Microsoft / GitHub; published enterprise terms | Teams already standardized on VS Code |
| Devin Desktop | VS Code fork (formerly Windsurf) | ~62% | Cognition; published terms | Cursor-like UX without SpaceX ownership |
| Augment Code | Editor extension | ~68% | Augment; enterprise BYOC inference option | Enterprises needing on-prem or self-hosted inference |
Our August 2026 tool comparison covers these in depth with benchmark data across task types. The short version: Claude Code is the highest performer on complex agentic tasks but requires abandoning the editor-based IDE workflow entirely. Devin Desktop (Cognition’s rebranding of Windsurf, completed June 2, 2026) offers the closest like-for-like UX to Cursor with substantially lower vendor-risk concerns. Augment Code is the strongest choice for enterprises that need self-hosted or bring-your-own-compute inference and cannot send code to any cloud provider.
Migration Considerations
If you’re on Cursor Teams or Enterprise with an annual contract, check your agreement for acquisition-triggered exit clauses. Some enterprise software contracts allow termination without penalty when the vendor undergoes a change of control. A 30-minute call with legal is worthwhile before your next billing cycle.
Individual Pro users have near-zero switching costs: month-to-month subscriptions and no organizational approval required. The main cost is workflow retraining. Devin Desktop is the lowest-friction migration path — as a VS Code fork, most Cursor keyboard shortcuts and muscle memory transfer. Claude Code requires a more substantial shift to a terminal-first workflow but pays off on complex multi-file tasks where its 80.8% SWE-bench Verified score is the current benchmark ceiling.
What to Watch for in the Coming Months
The most important item on Cursor’s to-do list is publishing data terms for Origin-native code hosting. Until those terms exist, mirror mode is the only responsible posture for teams with proprietary code. When terms are published, read the training-use and subprocessor sections carefully — if they are materially worse than Cursor’s pre-acquisition baseline, that is a genuine trigger for reconsideration, not just concern.
The second signal to watch is model routing policy. Cursor’s current multi-model support is a stated commitment, not a contractual one. If default routing shifts toward Grok — through Auto mode behavior changes, model-list reordering, or removal of competing models — that indicates where the platform is heading under SpaceX ownership. Monitor your Router Settings monthly.
As we covered when the acquisition first closed, the 4 million developers on Cursor now have a new counterparty for every privacy decision the product makes. The five steps above do not eliminate that reality — they make it visible, auditable, and manageable. That is the appropriate response until the terms catch up with the product.
Further Reading
- Cursor Origin Ships With No Data Terms — Tech Times’ detailed breakdown of what is missing from Origin’s data governance documentation and what the correct interim posture is
- Cursor Privacy and Data Governance Docs — the official documentation; read the distinction between Privacy Mode Standard and Enterprise carefully
- Cursor AI Enterprise Security: CISO Guide 2026 — BeyondScale’s full configuration guide covering SSO, SCIM provisioning, audit logs, and SOC 2 controls for enterprise deployments