Elon Musk clarified SpaceX’s recently disclosed contract with AI startup Anthropic, emphasizing that the company has committed only to a short-term 180-day compute lease rather than a long-term multi-year deal. Despite SpaceX’s financial filing suggesting a contract that could last through 2029, Musk highlighted the arrangement includes mutual cancellation clauses allowing either party to end the agreement with 90 days’ notice.
This clarification sheds new light on the $1.25 billion monthly revenue line disclosed in SpaceX’s IPO paperwork, which anticipated up to $40 billion over several years from leasing access to its Colossus supercomputing data centers. Musk’s statement indicates that while Anthropic has agreed to pay through 2029, SpaceX retains considerable flexibility to reclaim the infrastructure if needed.
Musk underlined that the short-term lease structure was SpaceX’s preference, not Anthropic’s, reflecting the company’s need to prioritize its own AI-heavy operations—including ventures like xAI and Tesla’s autonomous driving development—that demand extensive processing power. He assured that SpaceX will provide Anthropic with a “reasonable off-ramp” should compute resources become scarce, signaling the lease could be terminated if internal priorities change.
The original IPO filing disclosed this clause, noting that either party could terminate with 90 days’ notice, but Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) post offered crucial context about SpaceX’s stance on maintaining control over its computing assets amid growing AI demands. Both SpaceX and Anthropic have not provided further comment following Musk’s update.