Elon Musk on Thursday publicly clarified the details of SpaceX's data centre arrangement with AI company Anthropic. He stated that the deal covering its flagship Colossus supercomputing clusters is a six-month lease, not the multi-year commitment earlier reports had suggested. He also mentioned that the company may reclaim some computing power if it becomes 'supertight' for SpaceX to meet its own requirements.
What is the deal between SpaceX and Anthropic?
Earlier this year, SpaceX signed agreements under which Anthropic would pay the company $1.25 billion per month to access computing capacity from its Colossus and Colossus II data centre clusters, located in Memphis, Tennessee. The arrangement was initially reported to run through May 2029, drawing significant attention given the scale of the financial commitment.
However, Musk clarified that the agreement is structured as a 180-day lease, with a mutual 90-day cancellation notice available to either party after that period. '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. The short term was our request, not Anthropic’s,' Musk wrote in a post on X.
He added: '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.' This remark underscores that Colossus is not a resource handed off indefinitely but infrastructure over which SpaceX retains practical control, and could reclaim if its own AI operations demand it.
SpaceX is eyeing broader AI compute business
The clarification comes as SpaceX actively positions itself as a major player in the AI computing market beyond its existing arrangement with Anthropic. Last week, Musk posted on X that SpaceX was in discussions with multiple companies about 'offering AI compute as a service at significant scale,' signalling that the company wants to commercialise its supercomputing infrastructure more broadly rather than tie it to any single client on a long-term basis.
SpaceX's AI segment lost about $2.5 billion from operations in the March quarter, on segment revenue of $818 million, according to its IPO filing.
