Co-founder and CEO of Cursor
The co-founder and CEO of Cursor, the AI coding environment that grew into one of the fastest-growing software companies.
Michael Truell is an American software engineer and entrepreneur, co-founder and chief executive of Cursor, an AI coding agent company. Born in New York City, he studied at the Horace Mann School, where he met future co-founder Aman Sanger. In 2016 he co-created the Halite AI Programming Competition, which served over 10,000 contestants across three seasons. He earned a BS in computer science and mathematics from MIT.
In 2022 he co-founded Cursor, an AI-assisted coding environment, with Sualeh Asif, Aman Sanger and Arvid Lunnemark, whom he met at MIT. The company raised $60 million in a Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz in 2024 and $2.3 billion in November 2025 at a valuation of about $29.3 billion. Cursor has been reported to generate over $1 billion in annualized revenue and is used by companies including Nvidia, Adobe, Uber and Shopify. In June 2026 SpaceX acquired Cursor in an all-stock deal, the largest venture-backed startup acquisition in history.
Co-founded Cursor in 2022 with Sualeh Asif, Aman Sanger and Arvid Lunnemark, an AI-assisted coding environment used for software development.
Led Cursor through a $2.3 billion round co-led by Accel and Coatue in November 2025, raising its valuation to about $29.3 billion.
Co-created the Halite AI Programming Competition in 2016, which served over 10,000 contestants across three seasons.