Home / Technology / US AI Startup Cursor Faces Questions on Model Source
US AI Startup Cursor Faces Questions on Model Source
23 Mar
Summary
- Cursor's new Composer 2 model allegedly uses Kimi 2.5 as its base.
- Cursor confirmed starting from an open-source base but claims significant unique training.
- The company acknowledged a lapse in transparency regarding the model's origins.
AI coding firm Cursor recently unveiled its Composer 2 model, promoting it as possessing "frontier-level coding intelligence." Shortly after the announcement, an X user suggested Composer 2 was essentially Kimi 2.5, an open-source model from Chinese company Moonshot AI, with added reinforcement learning.
Cursor's vice president of developer education, Lee Robinson, acknowledged that Composer 2 originated from an open-source base. He emphasized that approximately three-quarters of the compute for the final model was from Cursor's own training, resulting in performance distinct from Kimi's. Robinson also stated that Cursor's utilization of Kimi complied with its license terms, a point corroborated by Kimi's official X account.
The company's co-founder, Aman Sanger, admitted that failing to mention the Kimi base in their initial blog post was an oversight. He indicated that this would be rectified for subsequent model releases. The situation highlights ongoing considerations in the AI development landscape, particularly concerning transparency and international collaboration.
