# Sualeh Asif

> Sualeh Asif is the 26-year-old co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Anysphere, the company behind Cursor - the AI-powered code editor that reached $2 billion in annual recurring revenue faster than any B2B company in history. Born in Karachi, Pakistan, he represented his country at the International Mathematical Olympiad three times before studying at MIT, where he and three classmates built the product that is now rewriting how software gets made. Valued at $1.3 billion on Forbes' 2026 Billionaires List, Asif went from teaching math to Karachi students to co-architecting the tool powering 50,000+ enterprises including Nvidia, Adobe, and Uber.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CPO at Anysphere (Cursor)
- **Organizations:** Anysphere, Cursor
- **From:** Karachi, Pakistan
- **Nationality:** Pakistani
- **Education:** A-Levels, Nixor College, Bachelor of Science, Mathematics and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- **Known for:** Co-founded Cursor/Anysphere, the fastest B2B company to reach $2 billion in ARR in history, Listed on Forbes 2026 Billionaires List with net worth of $1.3 billion at age 26, Ranked #2,919 on Forbes Billionaires List 2026

## Career timeline

- **2016-2018** — Represented Pakistan at the International Mathematical Olympiad; honorable mentions at Asian Pacific Mathematical Olympiads (2017, 2018)
- **2018-2022** — Studied Mathematics and Computer Science at MIT; researched graph algorithms, machine learning, number theory, and performance engineering; also studied theater
- **2019** — Published 'Tetris is NP-Hard Even with O(1) Columns' at JCDCG³ Conference
- **2020** — Published 'Arithmetic Expression Construction' at International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation
- **2021** — Published 'Computing L-Polynomials of Picard Curves from Cartier-Manin Matrices' in Mathematics of Computation
- **2021** — Interned at IBM Watson ML, working on language translation systems
- **2022** — Early contributor to Metaphor Systems, an LLM-powered search engine
- **2022** — Co-founded Anysphere Inc. with Michael Truell, Aman Sanger, and Arvid Lunnemark while still at MIT
- **2023** — Launched Cursor, an AI-powered code editor built on VS Code; raised $8M seed round led by OpenAI Startup Fund
- **2024** — Raised $60M Series A at $400M valuation (July 2024); appeared on Lex Fridman Podcast #447
- **2025** — Raised $900M Series C (June 2025, $9.9B valuation); then $2.3B Series D (November 2025, $29.3B valuation); Cursor crossed $1B ARR
- **2026** — Cursor hits $2B ARR; Forbes lists Asif as billionaire ($1.3B net worth); xAI/SpaceX announces $60B acquisition option (April 2026)

## Achievements

- Co-founded Cursor/Anysphere, the fastest B2B company to reach $2 billion in ARR in history
- Listed on Forbes 2026 Billionaires List with net worth of $1.3 billion at age 26
- Ranked #2,919 on Forbes Billionaires List 2026
- Represented Pakistan at the International Mathematical Olympiad (2016, 2017, 2018)
- Honorable mentions at Asian Pacific Mathematical Olympiad (2017, 2018)
- Published three peer-reviewed academic papers in mathematics and computer science
- Helped build a product used by 50,000+ enterprises including Nvidia, Adobe, Uber, and Shopify
- Appeared on Lex Fridman Podcast #447: 'Future of Programming with AI'
- Helped Cursor achieve $100M ARR (Jan 2025) to $2B ARR (Feb 2026) in 13 months
- Elected GitHub Arctic Code Vault Contributor

## Latest updates

- **2026-04** — xAI (SpaceX) announces deal giving it the option to acquire Cursor for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for collaborative work
- **2026-04** — Forbes lists Sualeh Asif as a billionaire ($1.3B net worth, rank #2,919) at age 26
- **2026-04** — Cursor in talks to raise $2B at $50B valuation as enterprise growth surges
- **2026-02** — Cursor surpasses $2B in annual recurring revenue, fastest B2B company to reach that milestone
- **2025-11** — Anysphere raises $2.3B Series D at $29.3B valuation, co-led by Accel and Coatue

## Links

- Website: https://www.sualehasif.me/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/sualehasif996
- GitHub: https://github.com/sualehasif

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/sualeh-asif
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-06
