Cursor AI coding assistant is one of the fastest‑growing tools popular among developers, helping to write over 100 million lines of code per day for over 50% of Fortune 1000 companies. In 2025, it shipped a faster Fusion Tab model, along with new pricing and background agents that run from the web, mobile, or through Slack.
In this guide, we’ll cover what Cursor is, the features to try first, real‑world adoption, and the traits that make it a standout AI coding tool.
What is Cursor?
Cursor is a fork of Visual Studio Code that bakes large‑language models into every editing flow. The familiar VS Code UI stays, but under the hood, Cursor adds two tightly‑integrated AI modes that define its Cursor AI coding assistant capabilities:
Fusion Tab Model (local)
- A sparse local LLM predicts multi‑line edits and even moves the caret to the next logical change.
- The January 2025 Fusion update jumped context to 13K tokens and cut median latency to ≈260 ms.
- Good for inline refactors, quick bug fixes, and “next‑action” completions.
Background Agents (cloud)
- Autonomous workers can run shell commands, touch many files, and open pull requests.
- Agents launch in the IDE, any browser, on mobile, or in Slack, so you can start a refactor on your phone and merge it later on your desktop.
- Good for whole‑file migrations, repo‑wide renames, and CI‑driven chores.
This hybrid design lets teams keep the offline feel of a local Cursor AI coding tool while delegating heavy jobs to more powerful models.
Key Features
Agent side‑pane for complex tasks.
Press Ctrl+I to open an autonomous agent that can run terminal commands, span files, and apply changes in a single click. Agents respect .gitignore, run tests if they’re present, and bail on failure.
Web and mobile access.
Launch the same agent from any browser and hand off bug fixes or feature scaffolds while away from your laptop.
Slack integration.
Mention @Cursor in Slack to start background agents and receive completion notifications inside team channels.
Codebase‑aware search.
The “Knows your codebase” panel lets the model read project files, docs, and diffs before proposing edits. Then, it can propose edits that align with existing naming conventions and architecture notes.
Privacy and SSO controls.
Team and Enterprise plans add Privacy Mode, SAML or OIDC single sign‑on, and seat management for regulated organizations.
Who is Using Cursor?
Cursor’s enterprise page states that the tool is already deployed in 50,000+ enterprises and within 53% of Fortune 1000 companies.
One of those prospects may soon be Amazon: Business Insider reported that an internal Slack channel devoted to the Cursor AI coding tool has ≈1,500 employees and that Amazon’s HR team is “optimistic” about a company‑wide rollout, pending security review.
What Makes Cursor Unique?
- Hybrid model routing. Cursor uses its in‑house Tab model to handle inline edits locally, and auto‑routes heavy jobs to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or xAI, depending on the price‑to‑quality ratio.
- Next‑action prediction. Fusion does more than insert text. It predicts where your cursor should move next, cutting cognitive load during large edits.
- Agents everywhere. Background agents now run in browsers and on phones, letting you fire off a refactor from a commute and merge it later.
- Enterprise‑grade privacy. Privacy Mode keeps code in volatile memory only, and Business plans ship with SAML SSO and seat management.
Security & Compliance
- Cursor is SOC 2 Type II certified, with third‑party audits covering security, availability, and confidentiality controls.
- Privacy Mode guarantees that your code never leaves volatile memory or becomes training data, while Enterprise customers can route every hosted call through a customer‑managed VPC and supply a KMS key for on‑disk encryption.
- Authentication hooks include SAML SSO, SCIM user provisioning, and granular RBAC so security teams can tie seats to existing identity groups.
- Annual penetration tests and shareable exec summaries round out a posture that satisfies finance, healthcare, and public‑sector compliance checklists.
Pricing
Individual Plans
- Free – Fusion Tab with limited hosted calls; good for evaluation.
- Pro – $20/mo. – Comes with a $20 monthly model credit instead of request caps. Most teams start here.
- Ultra – $200/mo. – 20 × Pro usage and priority access to new features, aimed at power users.
Teams Plans
- Teams – $40/user/mo. – Privacy mode, SAML, SSO.
- Enterprise (custom) – On‑prem inference, seat management, audit logs, and dedicated support.
Conclusion
Cursor is rapidly evolving from a fast VS Code fork into an everywhere available AI platform. The low‑latency Fusion Tab streamlines daily typing, while cross‑platform background agents act as distributed Cursor AI coding agents that refactor code, open pull requests, and update tickets from anywhere. Combined with hybrid model routing and strong privacy guarantees, Cursor AI has become a must-have for any software developer in 2025.
