Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, said on Thursday that SpaceX has only agreed to lease its Colossus AI training data center cluster to Anthropic for six months, but added that the agreement "could potentially" be extended to several years.
Zhitong Finance APP learned that on Thursday, Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, stated that SpaceX had only agreed to lease its Colossus AI training data center cluster to Anthropic for six months, but added that the agreement could potentially be extended for several years. Musk said, "SpaceX has not committed to leasing Colossus for multiple years, although that scenario could indeed occur."
According to prior reports, earlier this month, Anthropic entered into an agreement with xAI—Elon Musk’s company, which has since been acquired by SpaceX and renamed SpaceXAI—to procure 300 megawatts of computing capacity. Under the terms of the agreement, Anthropic will pay xAI $1.25 billion per month from the signing date through May 2029 to utilize computing resources from the Colossus and Colossus II data center clusters located in Memphis, Tennessee. The deal is expected to generate over $40 billion in revenue for xAI. In a regulatory filing last week, SpaceX stated that either party may terminate the agreement with 90 days’ advance notice. The filing did not mention the six-month lease arrangement.
Despite the ongoing boom in AI data center construction, sustained demand growth continues to outpace available computing capacity. The partnership between Anthropic and SpaceX represents the latest step in Anthropic’s efforts to secure computational resources to meet this demand. According to previous reports, Anthropic has committed to paying approximately $200 billion to Google Cloud over the next five years for cloud computing capacity used to train and deploy Claude. This investment reflects the scale of multiple prior agreements between Anthropic and Google. In October last year, Anthropic announced an expansion of its use of Google Cloud’s TPU chips, with Google pledging to provide Anthropic with over 1 gigawatt of computing capacity, which is set to come online this year. Last month, Anthropic entered into a new agreement with Google and Broadcom (AVGO.US) to secure approximately 3.5 gigawatts of TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) computing capacity, expected to be deployed gradually starting in 2027.
However, Musk clarified that the agreement is a 180-day lease, after which either party may terminate it with 90 days’ notice. On social media, Musk stated, "The short lease term was our requirement, not Anthropic’s. We won’t leave them stranded and will offer a reasonable exit option—but as I’ve previously indicated, if computing resources become extremely scarce, we might need to reclaim these resources at some point."
SpaceX’s provision of computing capacity to Anthropic is seen as an extension of the company’s evolving role as a 'computing infrastructure provider' and helps alleviate the significant cost pressures associated with building and operating data centers. According to IPO filings, SpaceX’s AI business segment generated $818 million in revenue in the quarter ending March, but incurred an operating loss of approximately $2.5 billion.
Last week, Musk indicated on social media that he is in discussions with other companies regarding similar service partnerships, as part of SpaceX’s strategy to commercialize AI computing services. Musk also noted that as SpaceX advances its in-orbit data center development, the company will gain the capability to deliver large-scale AI services, continuously expanding its commercial collaboration boundaries and supporting the development of computing infrastructure for the artificial intelligence industry.