Chicago – April 23, 2026
Pakistani AI talent is in the spotlight again as Sualeh Asif, the Karachi-born co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Cursor’s parent company Anysphere, joins the billionaire ranks after the startup’s valuation climbed to $29.3 billion. His rise underscores both the strength of Pakistan’s STEM pipeline and the continuing debate over brain drain.
From Karachi to MIT
Asif represented Pakistan in the Asian Pacific Mathematical Olympiad from 2016 to 2018 before heading to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he later co-founded Cursor with fellow students. He has been linked to product development on the company’s fast-growing coding tools, including the much-used Tab feature.
Cursor’s rapid ascent
Cursor’s momentum has been striking: the company raised $2.3 billion in November 2025 at a $29.3 billion post-money valuation and said it had already crossed $1 billion in annualized revenue at that time. By March 2026, reporting indicated the startup’s annualized revenue had doubled again to $2 billion, reflecting accelerating adoption among developers and enterprises.
Investor backing
The company has attracted heavyweight support from Accel, Coatue, Andreessen Horowitz, Google, Nvidia, Thrive Capital, and the OpenAI Startup Fund, helping fuel its scale-up. That level of backing has made Cursor one of the most closely watched AI coding startups globally.
