Acquisitions are definitely not "illegal"

I was listening to the Nerd Sniped podcast episode covering GPT 5.5, Anthropic's latest failures, but most importantly (to this jot), the SpaceX and Cursor kindof psuedo-acquisition. There was a notable quote "...acquisitions are illegal at this point. This is a firm handshake into we're working together for the price of an acquisition.". There's a couple problems with this line of thinking.

I'm going to keep this brief, but acquisitions are so far from illegal. There have been multiple actions to discourage competition. Enough acquisitions have happened (here, here, and here) that it feels safe to assume the main business philosophy of the past ~1.5 years is to buy. Vertically, horizontally, doesn't matter.

The reason for this deal being weird is that its between whatever bags SpaceX is holding on to, and Cursor's curious revenue reporting. Partner that with some genuine utility benefits between the two (which was covered well in the podcast episode), and you get this.

I highly recommend Ed Zitron's writing for understanding what's going on from a business side, specifically in the AI and SaaS.

This podcast is genuinely entertaining to listen to. Primarily, I just wish tech-focused content was a bit more skeptical of the finances behind AI.