Cursor capitalizes on GitHub frustration, launches rival hosting platform

For as long as anyone can remember, GitHub has been the de facto code host preferred by a majority of developers. However, in recent times, the platform has struggled with widely reported outages and performance degradation and, as it drops the ball, Cursor is waiting to pick it up.

The AI startup, which is now officially a part of SpaceX, launched Origin this week — a new code-hosting platform designed to do all of the things that developers typically use GitHub for: collaboratively work on codebases, browse and edit them, handle pull-requests (edits made by others asking to be added to the main codebase), and store them in repositories.

This seems like a natural next step for Cursor, whose primary focus until this point has been selling automated web development services through its AI Code Editor. Cursor has also said that “agent native” features will soon be available for Origin, although hasn’t shared many details yet. The company also says it is building a wider “app ecosystem” to support broader coding efforts within Origin.

Interestingly enough, using Origin doesn’t require a user to stop using GitHub. Indeed, Origin is designed to allow developers to work alongside GitHub and pass code back and forth between the two in an interoperable manner.

“Your GitHub repos can sit alongside the ones Cursor hosts,” Cursor says in its blog. “Connect GitHub to Cursor, pick your org, and you’ll see the repos you can sync. Select one and Cursor pulls it in.”

The launch of Origin coincides with ongoing frustration over a perceived dip in GitHub’s services. Indeed, on the same day that Cursor launched its new platform, GitHub suffered a quite lengthy worldwide outage. For over six hours, the site’s functions were reportedly degraded, with a nearly 20% error rate worldwide.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. either. Earlier this year, after a rash of outages, GitHub announced new actions to sate unhappy coders as its availability problems seemed to escalate. More broadly, the platform has suffered 257 outages over the past year, a recent analysis by LeadDev states. Such persistent issues have led to “a visible exodus of high-profile users,” writes LeadDev’s reporter Charles Humble.

Still, if Cursor wants to compete with GitHub, it will have its work cut out for it. According to GitHub’s own metrics, some 180 million developers use its platform as of last October. The platform, which was founded in 2007 and acquired by Microsoft in 2012, continues to be the largest source-code host in the world.