Cursor began rolling out Origin, a Git hosting platform built for AI agents, to paid users on August 17, 2025, weeks after SpaceX completed a reported $60 billion acquisition of the company. Roughly three and a half hours into the rollout, GitHub suffered a global service disruption that GitHub's own status page and outside accounts measured at between six hours 42 minutes and seven hours 35 minutes, against a backdrop GitHub's CTO has described as under-provisioned for current demand.
What Is Origin? Cursor's Git Platform Built for the Agentic Era
Cursor began rolling out Origin, a code hosting and collaboration platform, to paid-plan users starting the morning of August 17, 2025, ahead of a release originally planned for the fallCITE:E1CITE:E10. The platform provides code repositories, pull requests, code browsing, and GitHub synchronizationCITE:E1. Cursor describes Origin as "a git forge for the agentic era"CITE:E2.
Origin currently syncs Git history, branches, tags, and pull requests, but Cursor's own documentation states that GitHub Issues, GitHub Actions workflows, and secrets are not yet supportedCITE:E3. Origin was first shown publicly on June 16, 2025, at Compile, Cursor's first company conferenceCITE:E15. At that event, Cursor cited performance figures for the platform:
| Metric | Figure |
|---|
| Repository clones | ~296,000 per hour |
| Pushes | ~81,000 per hour |
| Commits (single repository) | 22.6 per second |
| Global sync latency | under 400 milliseconds |
| Automatic failover | under 10 milliseconds |
CITE:E16
How Large Is GitHub, and What Capacity Strain Has It Acknowledged?
GitHub served about 180 million developers as of October 2024, a scale its own leadership says the platform was never designed forCITE:E20CITE:E14. Founded in 2007 and acquired by Microsoft in 2012, GitHub reported processing 1 billion commits during 2025 and was handling about 275 million commits a week as of April, according to GitHub Chief Operating Officer Kyle DaigleCITE:E20CITE:E17. A separate analysis of the platform's incident history found GitHub recorded 257 incidents between May 2024 and April 2025CITE:E13.
GitHub Chief Technology Officer Vlad Fedorov acknowledged that the platform was not designed for the scale now being demanded of it. He said GitHub began work in October 2024 to increase capacity tenfold, but that future demand could reach 30 times current levelsCITE:E14.
| Metric | Figure |
|---|
| Developers on platform (Oct. 2024) | ~180 million |
| Commits processed in 2025 | 1 billion |
| Commits per week (as of April) | ~275 million |
| Recorded incidents (May 2024–Apr 2025) | 257 |
| Capacity increase underway (since Oct. 2024) | 10x |
| Projected future demand vs. current | up to 30x |
How Has AI Agent Activity Changed Git Workflow Volume?
The number of GitHub pull requests opened by AI agents rose from about 4 million in September 2025 to 17 million in March 2026, roughly quadrupling in six monthsCITE:E18. That shift in who — or what — is generating pull requests forms part of the demand growth GitHub's leadership has pointed to when discussing capacity constraintsCITE:E14CITE:E18.
What Happened to GitHub Hours After Origin's Rollout Began?
GitHub suffered a global service disruption beginning roughly three and a half hours after Origin's rollout started, which one account measured at six hours and 42 minutesCITE:E11. GitHub's own status page showed the incident starting at 13:40 UTC on August 17, with API Requests, Actions, Git Operations, Issues, Pages, Pull Requests, and Webhooks all affectedCITE:E7. During the disruption, GitHub's web and API traffic saw error rates of about 20% globally, while code archive downloads and raw repository file downloads saw error rates reach about 50%CITE:E8CITE:E12. Enterprise authentication functions — including SAML, OpenID Connect (OIDC), SCIM provisioning, and Team Sync — along with GitHub Copilot were also affectedCITE:E12.
GitHub said at 16:59 UTC that the primary disruption had eased, but Git Operations, API access, and part of Copilot authentication continued experiencing problems until GitHub declared the incident fully resolved at 21:15 UTC — putting the complete event at about 7 hours and 35 minutesCITE:E9.
| Outage metric | Figure |
|---|
| Incident start | 13:40 UTC, Aug. 17 |
| Web/API error rate | ~20% |
| Archive/raw file download error rate | ~50% |
| Partial easing reported | 16:59 UTC |
| Full resolution declared | 21:15 UTC |
| Total event duration (one measure) | ~7 hr 35 min |
| Global degradation duration (separate measure) | 6 hr 42 min |
What Is the Strategic Backdrop of SpaceX's Acquisition of Cursor?
SpaceX confirmed on August 14, 2025, that it had completed its acquisition of Cursor, closing a process that began in April 2025 and was formally announced in JuneCITE:E5. The financial size of the deal was not disclosed by either company in the confirmation; Business Insider reported the transaction was valued at $60 billionCITE:E5. Cursor has also worked with SpaceX on AI model development, co-training Grok 4.5 and assisting with training Grok 4.6, while gaining access to computing resources on SpaceX's Colossus supercomputerCITE:E6.
What Groundwork Did Cursor Lay Before Launching Origin?
Cursor first disclosed plans for a code storage and Git hosting service in June 2025, opening a waitlist and indicating a fall releaseCITE:E4. Origin was unveiled publicly that same month, on June 16, at CompileCITE:E15. Separately, Cursor acquired code-review startup Graphite in December 2024, in a deal reportedly priced above Graphite's valuation at the time; that acquisition underpins features now built into OriginCITE:E19.
What This Means
Origin's debut and GitHub's outage are not shown in the record to be causally connected, but they land in the same short window against a backdrop GitHub's own CTO has described as capacity-constrained, with a tenfold capacity build underway since October 2024 and projected demand of up to 30 times current levelsCITE:E14. That demand growth includes AI agents, whose GitHub pull-request activity quadrupled in six monthsCITE:E18, on a platform already processing a billion commits a year across about 180 million developersCITE:E17CITE:E20. Cursor enters this environment backed by SpaceX's Colossus compute and a Grok co-training relationshipCITE:E6, with Origin's own cited throughput — up to 296,000 clones and 81,000 pushes per hour — demonstrated at Cursor's Compile conference rather than at GitHub's operating scaleCITE:E16. Origin's sync with GitHub also does not yet cover Issues, Actions workflows, or secretsCITE:E3.