Elon Musk is Already Considering Breaking the Deal with Anthropic at SpaceX

A Surprising Agreement Between SpaceX and Anthropic

Recently, the announcement of Anthropic renting part of the computing power of Colossus, SpaceX/xAI's data center in Memphis, has drawn attention. However, this collaboration may be shorter than expected. Indeed, according to Elon Musk, the signed agreement only pertains to a 180-day rental.

The Terms of the Contract

The contract includes a mutual termination clause with a 90-day notice period. Although the S-1 document filed by SpaceX with the SEC suggests a long-term commitment, with payments potentially reaching $1.25 billion per month until May 2029, the reality seems different. A gradual increase in capacity was planned for May and June 2026 at a reduced rate, which hinted at a sustainable collaboration.

The Motivations of SpaceX

Elon Musk clarified that this limited duration was a request from SpaceX, not from Anthropic. This could indicate that SpaceX is not looking to establish a long-term relationship with Anthropic, the parent company of Claude. Instead, this rental could serve to demonstrate to investors that renting computing power is a profitable and potentially more stable activity than the Grok subscriptions sold on X.

An AI Project on the Horizon?

Another hypothesis is that Musk may be keeping the suspense around a future internal AI project that requires this computing power. He mentioned that SpaceX would provide a reasonable backup solution to Anthropic, but that the company could reclaim these resources if capacity became too limited. The terms of the agreement may have evolved since the filing of the official document, leaving room for various interpretations.