AI coding startup Cursor has launched its first country-specific subscription in India, marking its biggest expansion into the country as it seeks to deepen its presence in one of the world’s fastest-growing software developer markets ahead of its expected acquisition by SpaceX.

The company on Monday unveiled Cursor Start, a subscription priced at 649 rupees ($7) per month, significantly below its standard $20-per-month Pro plan, in a move designed to attract more Indian developers while maintaining a commercially sustainable business model.

The launch underscores India’s growing importance to global AI companies as they compete for millions of developers building AI-powered applications.

Cursor said India is already its third-largest market globally and has become its largest concentration of power users. The company’s user base in the country has more than tripled over the past year, prompting it to make India the first market where it has introduced localized pricing.

“We felt that we had an opportunity there to right-size the commercial model and drive scale,” Simon Green, Cursor’s head of Asia-Pacific and Japan, told TechCrunch.

“The technical competency of the country and the engineering talent that already exists make it a very natural fit.”

India has rapidly emerged as one of the world’s largest software development hubs. According to GitHub, more than 27 million developers now use its platform in India, second only to the United States, with more than 2 million new developers joining in 2026 alone.

That large and growing talent pool has made India a key battleground for AI companies looking to expand adoption among software engineers, startups and enterprises.

Cursor Start is aimed at developers who have outgrown the company’s free offering but do not require the full feature set of its premium subscription.

The plan includes access to Cursor’s Composer 2.5 model and Grok 4.5, along with higher usage limits than the free tier. Subscribers also receive cloud agents, the Cursor iOS application, plugins, support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), hooks and skills.

However, the lower-cost subscription excludes several premium capabilities available through the $20 Pro plan.

Those include access to frontier AI models from providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as advanced features including Bugbot, Auto Mode, Automations and the Cursor SDK.

Green said the company designed the lower-priced offering to complement, rather than replace, its flagship subscription. Unlike promotional pricing intended to win market share at a loss, Green said Cursor Start was built to remain financially sustainable because it relies primarily on Cursor’s own AI models, which cost less to operate than third-party frontier models.

The subscription is billed in Indian rupees and supports payments through credit cards, debit cards and India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), one of the country’s most widely used digital payment systems.

To prevent users outside India from taking advantage of the lower pricing, Cursor said it has implemented multiple verification measures, including checks designed to discourage access through virtual private networks (VPNs).

Part of A Broader AI Pricing Strategy

Cursor joins a growing list of AI companies adapting pricing strategies to match local purchasing power in emerging markets. OpenAI and Anthropic have both introduced India-specific subscription plans over the past year as competition intensifies in one of the world’s fastest-growing AI markets.

Green said India serves as a testing ground for localized pricing, adding that Cursor could introduce similar models elsewhere if the strategy proves successful.

“We will continue to do everything we can to fuel the demand and serve those clients that are using us,” Green said.

“Now, if this model proves that we could take it to other markets, perhaps we will. But I think it’d be crazy to say we would never do it elsewhere.”

OpenAI has already demonstrated a similar approach by launching its lower-cost ChatGPT Go subscription in India before expanding it into additional markets.

Expanding Local Operations

Alongside the new subscription, Cursor is investing in a larger operational footprint across India. The company recently hired its first salesperson in the country and expects another senior executive to join its Delhi office. It is also establishing a government affairs office while expanding technical customer support teams across Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai.

Although enterprise adoption remains in its early stages, Green said demand has so far been driven primarily by individual developers, startups and universities.

The company expects significant growth opportunities among banks and large enterprises as it expands its local sales organization.

Cursor’s India push comes just weeks before its planned acquisition by SpaceX, which agreed last month to purchase the AI coding startup in a $60 billion all-stock transaction following SpaceX’s blockbuster initial public offering. The acquisition, expected to close during the third quarter, builds on an existing partnership between the two companies that began in April to develop a next-generation AI platform for coding and knowledge work.

Green said Cursor will continue operating independently until the transaction is completed and emphasized that its India expansion strategy was already underway before the acquisition agreement.

Once the deal closes, however, Green said SpaceX’s established presence in India through its Starlink satellite internet business could help accelerate Cursor’s commercial expansion by reducing operational and market-entry barriers.

Alphabet’s Google is confronting a potentially far more expensive phase of Europe’s long-running antitrust campaign, as fresh regulatory findings under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) pave the way for a wave of private damages lawsuits that could collectively exceed $10 billion.

After absorbing more than €10.4 billion in EU antitrust fines over the past decade, Google now faces an escalating legal battle in courts across Europe, where rivals are seeking compensation for alleged losses caused by years of anti-competitive conduct. Unlike regulatory fines, which are paid to governments, these civil lawsuits could require Google to compensate competitors directly, creating a new and potentially much larger financial liability.

Lawyers and litigation funders told Reuters that the first major enforcement action under the DMA has significantly strengthened the legal position of companies seeking damages.

“I think this will trigger a new wave of litigation,” said Thomas Hoppner, a partner at Geradin Partners, who has advised German price comparison platform Idealo.

The latest litigation follows the European Commission’s decision to impose a roughly $1 billion fine on Google under the Digital Markets Act, accusing the company of continuing to favor its own services in search results while restricting app developers from directing users to cheaper payment options outside Google Play.

That decision is particularly significant because it establishes an official finding that anti-competitive conduct continued even after the DMA came into force.

Legal experts say plaintiffs can now point to those regulatory findings as evidence in civil courts, potentially making it easier to pursue damages not only for recent violations but also for conduct stretching back many years under broader EU competition law, including Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which prohibits abuse of a dominant market position.

Google has rejected the allegations.

“We strongly disagree with these lawsuits, which are brought by companies looking for a payout instead of investing in their own products,” a Google spokesperson said.

Damages Could Dwarf Regulatory Penalties

The emerging lawsuits highlight an important shift in Europe’s competition enforcement. For years, Google primarily faced administrative penalties imposed by regulators. Those fines, while substantial, represented fixed financial costs.

Private damages claims introduce a different level of risk because compensation can include lost profits, interest accumulated over many years, and other economic losses suffered by competitors.

Several major cases are already underway. According to Reuters:

German price comparison platform Idealo secured a landmark €465 million damages award from a Berlin court last November, one of the largest antitrust compensation judgments ever issued in Germany.

In Sweden, price comparison platform PriceRunner, backed by fintech company Klarna, filed a multibillion-dollar lawsuit after Google’s appeals against the EU shopping decision failed.

Italian comparison shopping company Moltiply Group is seeking €2.97 billion, while UK-based Kelkoo is pursuing claims worth several billion pounds.

Meanwhile, litigation finance company LitFin is backing two groups seeking more than $1 billion combined in Dutch courts over Google’s shopping auction practices.

Lawyers say additional cases are being prepared across multiple European jurisdictions.

“There are already a lot of these claims being filed, and probably more that are being prepared,” said Matej Pardo, chief operating officer of LitFin.

The Shopping Case Continues To Haunt Google

Many of the lawsuits trace their origins to Google’s decision in 2008 to prominently feature its own comparison shopping service in search results.

Competing shopping websites argued that Google’s self-preferencing sharply reduced their web traffic and advertising revenue, prompting complaints that eventually led to a European Commission investigation. That investigation resulted in a €2.42 billion fine in 2017, which Google unsuccessfully challenged before Europe’s highest court last year.

The recent DMA decision has renewed confidence among plaintiffs that regulators continue to view Google’s conduct as problematic.

Kelkoo Chief Executive Richard Stables said the latest ruling demonstrates that Google continues to engage in self-preferencing.

“We expect these to be impacted somewhat by the DMA decision because it shows that Google is still self-referencing even to this day,” he said.

The legal challenges come at a financially sensitive time for Alphabet. The company is dramatically increasing investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure, including data centers, networking equipment and advanced AI chips.

Those investments have significantly reduced free cash flow, with Alphabet reporting negative free cash flow during the second quarter for the first time since becoming a public company.

Investors have increasingly questioned whether massive AI capital expenditures across the technology sector will generate sufficient long-term returns. Should Google ultimately face billions of dollars in additional damages payments, the financial burden would come on top of already elevated AI spending and existing regulatory compliance costs.

While Alphabet maintains one of the strongest balance sheets in the technology industry, mounting litigation could further pressure cash flows over the coming years.

Europe Raises The Stakes For Big Tech

Google’s latest regulatory setback follows another major defeat earlier this year, when it lost its appeal against a €4.1 billion EU fine related to Android, where regulators concluded the company used its mobile operating system to cement Google’s dominance in internet search.

Together with the recent DMA penalties, Google has now accumulated six major European antitrust decisions, underscoring the EU’s increasingly aggressive approach toward dominant digital platforms. The DMA, which took effect to curb the market power of so-called “gatekeeper” technology companies, gives regulators stronger tools to prohibit practices such as self-preferencing, restrictions on interoperability and anti-steering provisions.

Some industry participants, however, argue enforcement remains too slow.

Marco Pescarmona, chairman of Moltiply Group, praised the legislation but questioned whether regulators are willing to use its full powers if violations continue.

“The DMA is a very good piece of legislation. The defect maybe is that it’s so effective that they’re afraid to use it,” he said.

Long Legal Battle Ahead

Despite the growing number of lawsuits, Google is unlikely to face immediate financial consequences.

Competition litigation in Europe often stretches over many years through multiple appeals.

The original Google Shopping case itself took nearly two decades from the alleged conduct to the exhaustion of Google’s appeals. Lawyers expect a similar timeline for many of the current damages actions.

In Sweden, for example, a Stockholm court recently ordered Google to pay approximately $1.97 billion, including interest, to PriceRunner. However, Klarna, which backs the company, expects Google to appeal, a process likely to take several more years.

The lengthy appeals are expected to delay financial payouts for Google. For rivals, the latest DMA ruling substantially strengthens the legal foundation of claims that could reshape how Europe’s digital competition laws translate into financial consequences.

While currently, Google appears targeted, the broader implication extends beyond Google.

The first DMA enforcement decisions are establishing precedents that could encourage competitors to pursue damages against other dominant technology companies, making private litigation an increasingly powerful complement to regulatory enforcement across the European digital economy.