Cursor's moat is it's user's data.

they have SOTA completion models (bought NineTab, founder left already, but still).

Cursor moat is they're the touch point with customers, not the big labs. imo

they can use all that data to better improve the ux/ui and piggyback on general models improvements

Have they done that? In my opinion they’ve built an AI IDE consisting of 90% forked open source code that has an identical experience to competitors with less of a chance to integrate with big tech Google/Microsoft/Apple-style ecosystem products.

The “step one: get user data, step two: ???, step 3: profit” business model is well established, and it definitely doesn’t always work.

The difference is that this time the price sensitive commodity is right in front of the customer with very little value surrounding it.