Elon Musk says Anthropic’s access to SpaceX and xAI’s Colossus data center is not a multi-year handover at all, but a 180-day lease with a 90-day mutual cancellation window after that. That is a much shorter fuse than the arrangement described in SpaceX’s SEC filing, and it raises an obvious question: is this a real long-term deal, or just a temporary way to make a giant AI data center look productive before SpaceX goes public?
Musk’s version also suggests the setup may be less stable than Anthropic would like. The startup has obvious reasons to want more compute as demand grows, while SpaceX appears eager to turn its infrastructure into revenue ahead of an expected IPO. Translation: one side needs chips, the other side needs a convincing story for investors.
Musk’s claim about the Colossus lease
On X, Musk pushed back on the idea that SpaceX had signed Anthropic to a three-year commitment. He said the short-term arrangement was SpaceX’s request, not Anthropic’s, and added that the company would ”provide a reasonable off-ramp” if compute becomes tight again. That is a neat way to frame flexibility as generosity.
- Lease length: 180 days
- After that: 90-day mutual cancellation notice
- Capacity ramping: May and June 2026 at a reduced fee
SpaceX’s filing tells a different story
SpaceX’s S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission paints a far firmer picture. It says Anthropic agreed to pay $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, with capacity ramping in May and June 2026 at a reduced fee. The filing does include the 90-day termination clause, but the overall structure reads far more like a locked-in commercial relationship than a half-year trial run.
That tension matters because big AI infrastructure deals are quickly becoming part of the IPO playbook. If a company can show recurring demand for its compute, it can argue that its expensive hardware is not just a science project with server racks. Cloud giants have used that logic for years; now SpaceX appears to be trying it with a data center that also happens to sit inside Musk’s wider AI empire.
Why the timing looks awkward
The short-term framing is awkward for both companies. Anthropic is trying to scale, and it does not benefit from sounding like a tenant who might get bounced in six months. SpaceX, meanwhile, is racing to show enough commercial traction to support what is expected to be the largest initial public offering in history, which makes every lease look a little more strategic than it probably is.
Gizmodo said it reached out to Anthropic for clarification. Until then, the safest reading is that this is either a very flexible contract or a very confident bit of spin. Given Musk’s habit of treating business arrangements like live software updates, a revision would not be shocking.