Cursor 2.5 launches with async subagents and JetBrains support — valuation talks at $50B

Cursor released version 2.5 on February 17, introducing async subagents — agents that can spawn nested subagents, creating a coordinated tree of parallel work across a codebase. Plugins now bundle MCP servers, skills, subagents, rules, and hooks into single installable units. The same update brought Cursor's Agent Client Protocol to JetBrains IDEs (IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm), significantly expanding its addressable developer base. Cursor also launched Automations: always-on cloud agents triggered by Slack, Linear, GitHub, and PagerDuty webhooks. Separately, the company is in preliminary talks for a funding round at approximately $50 billion — nearly double its valuation four months ago — on the back of crossing $2 billion in annual recurring revenue.

The subagent architecture is the genuinely novel part. Prior AI coding tools operated linearly — one agent, one task, then wait. Async nested subagents mean a single instruction can spawn parallel workstreams: one subagent writing tests while another refactors a module while a third updates documentation. Combined with the JetBrains expansion, Cursor is no longer a VS Code fork fighting for VS Code users. At $2B ARR with 60% enterprise revenue, it's now in direct P&L territory for Microsoft's Copilot business.