Cursor is built by Anysphere, Inc., and Anysphere's median filed base salary is $187,574. That is the midpoint of 39 certified labor condition applications decided between January 17, 2025 and June 26, 2026, as of the FY2026 Q3 disclosure file. It is also the most misleading headline figure in this database, because 82.1% of those filings sit exactly at the legal wage floor.
Key takeaways
- 39 certified H-1B filings under Anysphere, Inc., median filed base $187,574, p25 to p75 of $158,164 to $209,082 (Visionary Talks analysis of DOL LCA disclosure data, FY2026 Q3).
- Anysphere anchors the bottom of its filed salary range at the government's prevailing wage on 82.1% of filings, the second highest rate in the database. The filed base is a legal minimum, not an offer.
- The median top of its filed ranges is $300,000, which is $112,426 above the median base. That gap is where the actual offer sits.
- Software Engineer is the dominant title at 16 of 39 filings, with a $187,574 median and a single filing at $400,000.
- Hiring is recent. Only 4 of the 39 filings were decided in FY2025. The other 35 landed in the first three quarters of FY2026.
This article is based on primary sources: the US Department of Labor Office of Foreign Labor Certification LCA disclosure files for FY2025 Q1 through Q4 and FY2026 Q3, which we processed in full. Every salary figure below is computed from those workbooks. Full source list at the bottom.
The Number Everyone Will Quote, And Why It Is Wrong
$187,574 is an odd-looking number, and the oddness is the clue. Round salaries like $200,000 are chosen by companies. Numbers like $187,574 and $209,082 come out of the Department of Labor's own wage tables, which set a minimum for each occupation in each county.
Anysphere files a salary range on 92.3% of its applications, and on 82.1% of all filings it sets the bottom of that range exactly at the prevailing wage. So the $187,574 median is, for four filings in five, the federal floor for that job in San Francisco County rather than anything Anysphere decided.
The number Anysphere chose is the other end of the band. The median top of its filed ranges is $300,000.
That $112,426 gap is the honest answer to what Cursor pays: somewhere inside a band that typically runs from a legal floor near $187,574 to a company ceiling near $300,000. Anyone quoting the lower figure as "the Cursor salary" is quoting the government.
For reference, the pooled median across the 11 companies in the AI Salary Database is $200,000. On filed base Anysphere sits $12,426 below it, and on filed ceiling it sits well above.
Roles And What Each One Filed
| Job title | Filings | Median base | Range within title |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software Engineer | 16 | $187,574 | $135,699 to $400,000 |
| Research Scientist | 7 | $209,082 | $171,621 to $209,082 |
| Accountant | 2 | $146,058 | $146,058 to $146,058 |
| AI Deployment Manager | 2 | $151,070 | $124,509 to $177,632 |
| Member of Technical Staff | 1 | $194,834 | $194,834 to $194,834 |
| Field Engineer | 1 | $191,048 | $191,048 to $191,048 |
| Enterprise Account Executive | 1 | $155,522 | $155,522 to $155,522 |
| Data Scientist | 1 | $133,952 | $133,952 to $133,952 |
| Account Executive | 1 | $105,394 | $105,394 to $105,394 |
| Account Associate | 1 | $90,272 | $90,272 to $90,272 |
Thirty-nine filings is a small company's paperwork, and the table reads like one: sixteen engineers, seven researchers, and then single instances of an accountant, a field engineer and two sales roles. This is not a company sponsoring at scale. It is a company sponsoring the specific people it could not hire otherwise.
The Research Scientist rows are worth a second look. All seven sit at one of two values, $209,082 or $171,621, with five on the higher figure. Both are prevailing-wage determinations. Seven researchers filed at two identical floor values tells you the applications were prepared as a batch against the wage tables, and tells you nothing at all about what those seven were paid.
The one genuine outlier is a Software Engineer filed at $400,000 flat, with no band. That is Anysphere choosing a number, and it is more than twice the company's own median filed base.
Two Filings We Threw Out
Anysphere's raw data contained an Account Executive filing of $132,954 with the unit of pay recorded as Month, which annualises to $1,595,448. It is an employer entry error: the same role appears elsewhere in the data around $105,000 a year, and no account executive at a 39-person sponsorship programme earns $1.6 million.
Our pipeline excludes any filing where a sub-annual unit carries a value that is itself a plausible annual salary. Two Anysphere filings were dropped on that rule. We mention it because a naive read of the same federal file would put Anysphere's maximum salary at $1.6 million, and some salary sites will.
The Money Behind The Payroll
Anysphere is no longer independent. SpaceX announced a $60 billion all-stock acquisition on June 16, 2026 and closed it on August 14, 2026, making Anysphere a wholly owned subsidiary inside the SpaceXAI division. It is the largest acquisition of a venture-backed startup on record, and we traced the ownership chain in who owns Cursor.
Every filing on this page predates that close. The most recent was decided on June 26, 2026, seven weeks before the deal completed, so this is a picture of Anysphere's pay as an independent company.
The comparison with its new sibling is instructive. SpaceX also owns xAI, which files a median base of $275,000 against Anysphere's $187,574, and anchors at the legal wage floor on 7.6% of filings against Anysphere's 82.1%. Same parent since August 2026, two completely different approaches to telling the federal government what they pay.
Cursor passed $1 billion of annualised revenue in November 2025. Thirty-nine sponsored employees is what that was built on.
FAQ
What is the average salary at Cursor?
The median filed base at Anysphere, Inc. is $187,574 across 39 certified filings decided between January 2025 and June 2026. That figure is the legal prevailing wage on 82.1% of filings, so it understates pay. The median top of Anysphere's filed salary ranges is $300,000.
What does a software engineer earn at Cursor?
The 16 Software Engineer filings have a median filed base of $187,574 and run from $135,699 to $400,000, as of the FY2026 Q3 file. As above, the lower end of that range is generally a federal floor rather than an offer.
Does Cursor pay less than other AI companies?
On filed base it appears to, at $187,574 against a $200,000 pooled median. On filed ceiling it does not, at $300,000 against $205,000 at Waymo and $204,598 at Meta AI. The difference is filing practice, not pay.
Is this total compensation?
No. Base wage only. Anysphere shareholders received SpaceX Class A stock when the acquisition closed on August 14, 2026, and no equity of any kind appears in this data.
Sources
1. LCA Disclosure Data, FY2026 Q3, US Department of Labor OFLC: dol.gov performance data. Decisions from October 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026.
2. LCA Disclosure Data, FY2025 Q1 to Q4, US Department of Labor OFLC: dol.gov performance data. Decisions from October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025.
3. Visionary Talks, Who Owns Cursor: who owns Cursor. Establishes Anysphere, Inc. as the company behind Cursor, the $60 billion SpaceX acquisition closing August 14, 2026, and the November 2025 revenue milestone cited above.