From Pakistan's maths olympiad team to a SpaceX deal

Transcript

At 16, he represented Pakistan at the Maths Olympiad. At 26, Elon Musk's SpaceX paid $60 billion for what he built next. Meet Swale Aaseef. In 2016, a 16-year-old from Karachi sat down at the International Mathematical Olympiad with nothing but a pen and paper. He represented Pakistan three years in a row. He came from a middle-class family with no connections in tech. In between competitions, he taught younger kids at Pakistan's Maths camps. Then he got into MIT. There, he found three friends who loved Maths and code as much as he did. In 2022, while still students, the four of them started a company. Their first idea, AI for engineers who designed machine parts, went nowhere. There was two little data, and it was a world none of them knew. So they built the tool they want to use themselves. An app where you describe what you want in plain English and AI writes the code. They called it cursor. By January 2025, it was making $100 million a year. By November, $1 billion. In April, 2026, SpaceX got the right to buy it for $60 billion, or pay $10 billion for the work they'd done together. In August, the deal closed, paid entirely in SpaceX shares. He first represented Pakistan solving problems with a pen and paper. A decade later, engineers around the world solved theirs with something he helped build.

Transcribed automatically from the video, so small errors are possible.