The French government agency that handles the issuing and management of citizens’ identity documents, including national IDs, passports, and immigration documents, confirmed Wednesday that it experienced a data breach.

In an announcement, the Agence Nationale des Titres Sécurisés (ANTS) said the data stolen in the breach could include full names, dates and places of birth, mailing and email addresses, and phone numbers on an undisclosed number of citizens. ANTS said the investigation to determine how the breach happened and its impact is ongoing, and people whose data was affected are being notified. 

ANTS, which said it detected the attack on April 15, did not specify how many people were affected by the breach. But some reporting suggests millions may have had some of their personal information stolen. 

According to Bleeping Computer, a hacker has advertised the stolen data on a hacking forum, claiming to have a database with 19 million records. The hacker’s forum post referenced the same kind of stolen information as mentioned in ANTS’ announcement and was published before ANTS publicly disclosed the breach on April 20.

Until a few hours before SpaceX announced its deal, giving it the option to acquire Cursor — the maker of AI-powered coding software — for $60 billion, Cursor was on track to close a $2 billion funding round later this week, according to a person familiar with the matter. The round would have valued the company at $50 billion. SpaceX said it would either buy the company at some point later this year or pay $10 billion to Cursor to collaborate on AI development.

Cursor was apparently running a parallel process, negotiating a potential acquisition by SpaceX while simultaneously finalizing a private funding round with investors that include Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive, Nvidia, and Battery Ventures, details of which were first reported by TechCrunch last week.

It is not uncommon for startups to engage in acquisition discussions while simultaneously raising new capital. While many private companies prefer to remain independent, Cursor’s $2 billion raise would have fallen short of the capital needed to reach cash-flow breakeven, likely forcing the company to raise substantial funding later, the person said.

SpaceX, which recently merged with xAI, has been aiming to beef up its AI capabilities to better compete with leaders like Anthropic and OpenAI. Acquiring Cursor gives Elon Musk’s company a better chance of challenging rivals in AI coding, currently the most lucrative application of the technology.

However, SpaceX is delaying the potential acquisition of Cursor until after its IPO this summer. This is largely because the company wants to avoid updating its confidential financial filings before the listing, and it will be easier to finance the $60 billion purchase using its new, publicly traded stock.

The deal appears to benefit both sides for several reasons.

Despite fast revenue growth, Cursor is facing fierce competition from Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex. Given that threat, the startup could face challenges in continuing to raise private capital to finance its massive computing needs. Even if SpaceX doesn’t go through with the acquisition, Cursor is receiving a $10 billion capital injection paid out over time from Elon Musk’s company.

Additionally, if SpaceX goes through with the acquisition, the space giant will likely keep the entire Cursor team intact. Unlike Google’s purchase of Windsurf, which was structured as an acqui-hire of key individuals, SpaceX currently lacks a meaningful AI workforce and is widely seen as not having a significant AI business.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has access to vast computing capacity at its data centers in Mississippi and Tennessee, which it can offer Cursor, potentially in lieu of part of the $10 billion “collaboration” payment promised the coding startup.

The company would also like public investors to value it as more than just a space and satellite business. By promising to potentially acquire Cursor, SpaceX positions itself as an AI company, giving it a chance to garner the much higher valuation multiple that Wall Street currently assigns to AI companies.

Earlier this month, NASA’s Artemis II mission sent four astronauts to orbit the moon and used new laser communications systems to beam dramatic images back to Earth.

One of the receivers, though, wasn’t hosted by the U.S. space agency. A low-cost terminal built by the companies Observable Space and Quantum Opus, and operated by the Australian National University, pulled down data broadcast from a spacecraft at the moon at a rate of 260 megabits per second.

That success proves that high-throughput connections between Earth and space can be done on the cheap, the companies say.

The terminal used Observable Space’s software and telescope to capture and lock onto the transmissions from the Orion spacecraft, and a photonic sensor built by Quantum Opus to decode the data. Their terminal cost less than $5 million, compared to more bespoke solutions that cost tens of millions of dollars.

NASA has been testing deep space laser communications for several years, including a demonstration of data links with a spacecraft 218 million miles from Earth on its way to an asteroid. Artemis II was its most comprehensive demonstration yet: NASA’s primary receivers in California and New Mexico, as well as the low-cost experimental terminal in Australia, all collected 4K video from the trip around the moon.

Though laser communications boast much higher throughput than radio frequency transmissions that remain the primary communications option for space, lasers are more vulnerable to disruptions from cloudy weather, and they must be within line of site of their target — hence the importance of having a reception site on the other side of the world from the U.S.

Josh Cassada, a former U.S. astronaut who co-founded Quantum Opus, pointed out that Australia was the first continent to appear in the first Earthrise photo captured by the Artemis II astronauts.

Observable Space CEO Dan Roelker said the mission proves that space-to-Earth laser downlinks are ready to scale. Already in wide use for satellite-to-satellite connections, the technology hasn’t previously been used to transmit back to Earth because of the cost, but now he envisions a global network of these terminals to receive data sent from satellites of all kinds.

“We can scale this over the next year or more,” Roelker told TechCrunch, though he said the company isn’t ready to reveal its full strategy yet.

“We will partner with a lot of people around this,” he said, “whether this is something we’re going to do ourselves, or partner with other ground station-as-a-service companies, or work with extremely large constellation providers that are going to want to own their own infrastructure.”