AI Startups Have a ‘Cursor for Everything’ Identity Crisis
Soon after ChatGPT’s launch in November 2022, a wave of announcements quickly followed, with many claiming to build a ‘ChatGPT for XYZ’ purpose. Most of it turned out to be mere hype—people jumping on the bandwagon to garner attention. Today, everyone is building a ‘Cursor for XYZ’. But this time, these are not just claims. PonderAI, or the ‘Cursor for video editing’, as founder Timothy Wang likes to call it, is one among these. Wang said that he and his co-founder “spent the past few weeks building PonderAI to edit a vlog” because his Adobe subscription expired. Wang claims that it is the first AI video editor. we built Cursor for video editing pic.twitter.com/eT68hRhFNq— timothy (@timwangyc) April 14, 2025 You can input a prompt on the timeline of the video editor to suggest changes like replacing clips from one place to another or adding speed-up or quick cuts. The team is currently working on adding stylistic features, AI-generated videos for real footage, and simultaneous editing for different platforms like YouTube and Instagram. “Vibe coding is dead. Vibe editing is here,” Wang wrote in another post on X. But it doesn’t end here. A limitation of Cursor is that it is not as useful for mechanical engineers as it is for software engineers. Stepping in to fill the gap, Owein Dourneau, co-founder of Fairwik and Founder Inc decided to make MecAgent. The team calls it a ‘Cursor for mechanical engineers’. introducing mecagent:its cursor for mechanical engineers pic.twitter.com/R66RvHfatJ— Othecents (@Do_owne) April 11, 2025 In the launch video, the team demonstrated how their AI copilot empowers mechanical engineers with real-time collaboration and CAD generation from drawings or texts. It also integrates well with 3D CAD generation software like SolidWorks, CATIA, Inventor, Fusion 360, and Creo. MecAgent also has a live pricing feature, which gives cost estimates while designing based on geometry, materials, and the cost of the manufacturing processes. Not just engineering, Cursor’s vibe coding phenomenon has reached designing and 3D modelling as well. Martin Sit from the University of Waterloo built a 3D modelling software, which won an award at Canada’s largest AI hackathon, GenAI Genesis. Sit calls it ‘Cursor for 3D modelling’, or officially, Vibe Draw. Along with Osher Ahn-Clifford, William Zeng, and Ahtesham Ulhaq, Sit built Vibe Draw in 36 hours. It allows users to sketch freely on an infinite 2D canvas, and intelligently creates polished, colourful 3D models. we built Cursor for 3D modeling. pic.twitter.com/dWNPEOkS6Q— martin (@_martinsit) March 24, 2025 Vibe Draw allows you to text prompt into 3D models directly and improve sketches with one click. Users can also edit the 3D models by sketching over them. The tool is fully compatible with iPad and Apple Pencil. Another ‘Cursor for 3D models’ is Wielder.ai, which allows users to create assets for games, including audio files. Like Replit or Lovable, users can create games within 5 minutes and share them on the platform for others to play. To illustrate, Adam Cohen Hillel, founder of a stealth company, created a custom Minecraft game with the theme of Rick & Morty in less than five minutes. cursor for games, with 3D, 2D and audio assets generationin less than 5 mins, a we created a custom minecraft, with Rick and Morty theme, all AI-generated pic.twitter.com/PoPfTAgSwX— ADAM (@adamcohenhillel) April 5, 2025 Investors, Take Note While Y Combinator has been trying to fund startups building forks of VS Code to compete with Cursor, it also backed a startup building what they call a ‘Cursor for Microsoft Word’. TamLabs is an AI document editor embedded directly into Microsoft Word. Users can describe, draft, and revise documents with AI in natural language prompts and adjust with proper formatting. “Microsoft Word has 400M+ users, yet its core editing experience has remained largely unchanged for decades,” reads the YC blog. TamLabs is building Cursor for Microsoft Word.All knowledge workers can now use the AI tools that supercharge software development.https://t.co/878ONkiA1W pic.twitter.com/In1GemKVIe— Y Combinator (@ycombinator) February 27, 2025 Another interesting use case was built by Dylan Fournier, the founder of Arcads AI. The team calls it ‘Cursor for marketers’. The agent analyses top-performing ads and finds patterns. Users can input their desired scripts, and an AI anchor will generate them. When it comes to animated videos, Henrique Campos is building Brazu, which is an AI plugin ecosystem for Adobe After Effects. “We make video designers more productive,” reads Campos’ bio on LinkedIn. It is important to note that none of these tools actually use Cursor in any form and are just trying to market themselves as a Cursor for a specific use case. This is mostly for views and attention, similar to the ones building around ChatGPT in the past two years. An X account with the handle ‘enggirlfriend’ wrote: “Whoever builds ‘Cursor for Google Docs’ first is going to be a billionaire, break the brains of millions of Americans, change the way we learn to write forever.” One important statistic to note is that while Cursor is competing in the market of AI coders, it has not spent a single dollar on marketing, and took only 12 months to reach $1 million ARR, as Aman Sanger, one of the founders, claims.
On the other hand, Cursor has not spent a single dollar on marketing, at least that is what the founders claim.
Everyone is building ‘a Cursor for something’. While Cursor has not spent a dollar on marketing, at least that is what the founders say.
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["AI", "ML", "GenAI", "ChatGPT", "Aim", "R", "Go", "GPT", "CLIP", "startup"]
Mohit writes about AI in simple, explainable, and often funny words. He's especially passionate about chatting with those building AI for Bharat, with the occasional detour into AGI.