AI coding-assistant start-up Cursor is not only leveraging artificial intelligence to aid developers in crafting code, but it's also implementing AI throughout its internal functions, stated CEO Michael Truell to attendees at Coins2Day’s Brainstorm AI event in San Francisco.
TL;DR
- Cursor uses AI internally for customer service, communications, and data access.
- Cursor's AI coding assistant helps developers create and modify code.
- Studies show mixed results on AI's impact on developer productivity and task completion.
- Senior engineers may benefit more from AI coding tools than junior developers.
Truell stated that the firm had already automated approximately 80% of its customer service requests through the assistance of the innovation. He mentioned that the organization had likewise deployed an in-house AI-driven communication platform enabling staff to seek data throughout the enterprise. “We’ve actually done a lot of work internally on customizing that setup,” he remarked.
Cursor also employs AI for its internal communications, he stated. “We have a system where folks can ask any question about the company and get it answered by an AI,” Truell mentioned, along with a project involving “a few forward deployed engineers internally embedded throughout, building custom tooling right now for operations, for sales and experimenting,”, he added.
Within the realm of enterprise software solutions, certain major corporations are encountering escalating difficulties with uptake as they endeavor to incorporate AI into their operational processes.
Information confined within isolated systems, known as data silos, hinders AI instruments from obtaining the comprehensive context essential for their effectiveness. Furthermore, the proliferation of diverse tools and platforms accumulated over extended periods of expansion, termed technical sprawl, can lead to difficulties in integration. A growing number of companies are recognizing the necessity for specialized technical proficiency to adapt AI models for particular business requirements.
Engineers are seeing productivity gains
Valued at $29.3 billion, Cursor announced last month that it surpassed $1 billion in yearly revenue and currently employs over 300 individuals. The firm has experienced swift expansion since its establishment by four MIT alumni in 2022. Its AI coding assistant, initially released in 2023, has gained traction among software developers who utilize it for both creating and modifying code.
Conflicting findings exist regarding the actual utility of AI instruments in software development. A study conducted in July 2025 by the non-profit organization research group METR revealed that seasoned programmers engaged with extensive, well-established code repositories experienced a 19% increase in task completion duration when employing AI aids like Cursor and Claude, even though they felt their productivity had improved by 20%. The investigators suggested this deceleration stemmed from the hours dedicated to formulating prompts for AI, awaiting its output, and subsequently scrutinizing the code it produced.
A recent investigation carried out by University of Chicago revealed that groups employing Cursor's AI coding tool within major corporations finalized 39% more pull requests (PRs) than those who didn't. The findings further indicated that experienced programmers formulated more thorough strategies prior to coding and exhibited enhanced proficiency when collaborating with AI entities.
“A lot of folks think that junior developers get the most out of AI,” Truell said. But “when these academics went in and looked at the data, it looked like senior engineers actually were more effective in using the tools and were accepting code at higher rates and were getting more value from that.”
Truell remarked that this also caught him off guard: “We want to dig into to understand exactly why that’s the case.”
