Remember when Elon Musk announced that he would be leasing the available computing power at SpaceX/xAI’s massive Colossus data center to Anthropic? Turns out Anthropic’s time at the Memphis data center will might be more of a long-term hotel stay than a year-long lease with the world’s worst landlord. Per Musk, the agreement with Anthropic is only a 180-day lease.
In a post on X, Musk responded to a person suggesting that his company’s agreement with Anthropic was for three years by explaining, “SpaceX has not committed to leasing Colossus for years, although it’s possible that may be what happens. This is a 180 day lease with 90 day notice mutual cancellation thereafter.” That’s a mighty quick turnaround, given that Anthropic seemingly needs to scale up to meet its growing demand, while Musk is in dire need of revenue on his books as SpaceX heads toward an initial public offering.
According to Musk, “The short term was our request, not Anthropic’s,” which is interesting. Maybe he wants to treat the agreement as a proof of concept to show investors that renting the massive amount of compute that his company has built is a viable business model (certainly more viable than selling Grok subscriptions to racist individuals on X, at least).
Or maybe it’s an effort to generate hype and give people the impression SpaceX is going to need those chips back for some major in-house AI initiative. That at least seems in line with Musk’s own statement, in which he explained, “We won’t leave them hanging and will provide a reasonable off-ramp, but if compute gets super tight I said we might need it back at some point.”
Musk’s accounting of the deal between SpaceX and Anthropic doesn’t quite match up with the way that it’s described in SpaceX’s S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to that document, Anthropic “has agreed to pay us $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, with capacity ramping in May and June 2026 at a reduced fee.” The document does reflect the mutual 90-day termination clause. The text simply seems to suggest the deal is locked in for three years.
Gizmodo reached out to Anthropic for clarification on the lease agreement and will update when we hear back.
Something may have changed in the time between when SpaceX filed that document and now. The company has seemingly been acting in a whirlwind fashion to secure as many agreements as it possibly can ahead of going public, likely in an effort to show that it can justify what is expected to be the largest initial public offering in history.
