SpaceX told investors on Wednesday that its contract with Anthropic to access the Colossus 1 data centre in Memphis is a short‑term arrangement, not the multi‑year commitment many had assumed. Musk posted on X that the lease runs for a base period of 180 days, after which either party can walk away with 90 days’ notice.
“The short term was our request, not Anthropic’s,” Musk wrote. “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.”
The clarification matters because SpaceX filed for an initial public offering last week, and the terms of material contracts must appear in the S‑1 filing. The prospectus references a 90‑day mutual cancellation provision but does not spell out the 180‑day base term, creating a disclosure gap that analysts will likely probe during the roadshow beginning in early June.
Colossus 1, originally built to train xAI’s Grok model, houses more than 220,000 Nvidia GPUs and provides over 300 megawatts of compute power. The facility’s monthly rent was reported at $1.25 billion. Anthropic announced earlier this month that it had gained full access to the cluster, using the extra capacity to raise rate limits on its Claude Code and Opus APIs.
Earlier coverage framed the agreement as a three‑year lease worth $45 billion in total. Musk’s latest statement cuts that figure dramatically. A six‑month base term at $1.25 billion per month caps the deal at $7.5 billion, assuming no extension. The shorter term gives SpaceX flexibility to reclaim the hardware if internal demand for Grok training spikes or other compute needs arise.
Anthropic, meanwhile, appears to treat the lease as a near‑term bridge rather than a long‑standing anchor for its services. The company’s public statements about raising rate limits implied a more permanent arrangement, but the new timeline suggests a tactical, temporary boost.
Industry observers note that the timing of the lease revision aligns with SpaceX’s IPO preparations. The Securities and Exchange Commission will scrutinize the S‑1 for any material agreements that could affect revenue projections. The discrepancy between the filing’s cancellation clause and the now‑public base term could become a focal point for potential investors.
Musk’s relationship with Anthropic has been rocky. He has publicly labeled the startup “Misanthropic” and positioned it as a competitor to his own xAI venture. All 11 co‑founders of xAI have left in the past year, and xAI’s 2025 financials showed a $6.4 billion loss on $3.2 billion of revenue, lagging behind peers such as Anthropic and OpenAI.
Neither SpaceX nor Anthropic issued formal comments beyond Musk’s X posts. The lease’s short‑term nature underscores SpaceX’s need to retain flexibility as it balances external AI partnerships with internal model training demands, all while navigating the scrutiny of a public offering.
This article was written with the assistance of AI.
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