Anthropic is now one of SpaceX’s largest customers as of July 2026. Elon Musk confirmed this shift publicly after users on X suggested he could simply shut down the AI lab’s servers to damage a rival. He replied that such a move was not his style.
Musk stated on Thursday that he was clearly wrong about the company. This comment addressed a post from September 2025 where he claimed winning was not a possible outcome for them. At that time, the firm already held the largest AI market share with enterprises.
The compute deal
In May, the company signed an agreement to purchase 300 megawatts of computing power. This output comes from xAI’s Colossus 1 data centre near Memphis, Tennessee. Musk’s xAI merged with SpaceX in February.
Anthropic agreed to pay $1.25 billion per month through May 2029. The deal is worth about $40 billion in revenue for SpaceX’s xAI unit. Google also signed a contract to rent infrastructure through June 2029 for $920 million per month.
Musk’s defence
Musk insists this was not a dangerous decision for the rival. He expressed admiration for the company.
“They are obviously currently the leader in AI. No company has released a model as good as Mythos/Fable and they will undoubtedly have Mythos 2 ready soon. And I would never cut them off in a way that hurt them badly, even as a competitor. That’s not my style,” he wrote.
He cited Tesla’s 2014 decision as proof of his approach. A now deleted company blog post, currently housed under its patent pledge, outlined the move not to initiate patent lawsuits against anyone using its technology in good faith. He also noted Tesla opened its Supercharger network and charging port design to competitors.
“SpaceX launches competing satellite systems with no increase in price or use of unfair terms. Even my worst enemies can attack me on this platform,” he wrote.
History of tactics
Musk is not entirely above tactics aimed at rivals, especially those with whom he has a history. He sued OpenAI, for instance.
Anthropic does not have to rely on Musk sticking to his style. There would certainly be contractual consequences if he suddenly shut down the infrastructure. Not to mention the massive benefits for SpaceX to keep that deal intact. The company pays handsomely, and its engineers may learn how to build for, and support, the firm’s growing AI, just like Amazon’s engineers do.
That proximity might have other benefits as well. During his trial against OpenAI, Musk acknowledged that AI distilling was real. This is a process where one model maker sets up many fake accounts to send prompts to a competitor in order to learn how it works. As the New York Times reported, when a lawyer asked him if xAI had ever distilled technology from OpenAI, Musk replied: “Generally AI companies distill other AI companies.”
Anthropic accused three Chinese model makers of doing this to Claude in February. Presumably, Anthropic and Google feel they have safeguards against SpaceX doing this while they are using its infrastructure. But hosting the compute could still give SpaceX greater visibility into how the company operates than most competitors would ever have.
There appears to be nothing but upside for Musk’s company in this partnership at the moment. As for tomorrow, and as the three-year contract ages, who knows?
