Ought to Anthropic belief Elon Musk to host its fashions? After customers on X implied that Musk might get up sooner or later and easily boot the AI lab from SpaceX’s servers as a option to kneecap a rival, Musk replied with glowing reward for the AI lab. He mentioned that such a trick was “not my fashion.”
“I used to be clearly mistaken about Anthropic,” Musk wrote on Thursday, referring to his September 2025 post on X during which he mentioned, “Successful was by no means within the set of potential outcomes for Anthropic.” After all, even at the moment, Anthropic might already be thought-about a winner; the corporate was reported to have the biggest AI market share with enterprises.
It appears these anti-Anthropic days are behind Musk — and never simply on X. As of July 2026, Anthropic is one in all SpaceX’s largest clients.
To recap: Anthropic signed a deal in May to purchase 300 megawatts of compute, the whole output of xAI’s Colossus 1 knowledge heart close to Memphis, Tennessee. (Musk’s xAI merged with SpaceX in February.) Anthropic agreed to pay $1.25 billion per 30 days via Might 2029, a deal value about $40 billion in income for SpaceX’s xAI unit. Google, by the way, also signed a deal to hire SpaceX infrastructure via June 2029, for $920 million per 30 days.
Musk insists that this wasn’t a harmful resolution by Anthropic and that he’s stuffed with admiration for the rival.
“They’re clearly at the moment the chief in AI. No firm has launched a mannequin pretty much as good as Mythos/Fable and they’re going to undoubtedly have Mythos 2 prepared quickly. And I might by no means reduce them off in a approach that damage them badly, whilst a competitor. That’s not my fashion,” he wrote.
He supplied as proof of his don’t-squeeze-competitors fashion Tesla’s resolution in 2014 (which was outlined in a now deleted firm weblog submit and now housed underneath its patent pledge) to not provoke patent lawsuits in opposition to anybody who, in good religion, desires to make use of its expertise. He additionally famous that Tesla opened its Supercharger community and charging port design to opponents.
“SpaceX launches competing satellite tv for pc techniques with no enhance in value or use of unfair phrases. Even my worst enemies can assault me on this platform,” he wrote, itemizing one other instance.
After all, Musk is just not precisely above techniques aimed toward rivals, particularly these with whom he has a historical past. He sued OpenAI, for instance.
Anthropic doesn’t need to depend on Musk’s sticking to his “fashion” although. There will surely be contractual penalties if Musk immediately shut down Anthropic’s infrastructure. To not point out the large advantages for SpaceX to maintain that deal intact. Not solely does Anthropic pay handsomely, however SpaceX’s engineers might discover ways to construct for, and assist, Anthropic’s rapidly growing AI , identical to Amazon’s engineers do.
That proximity might need different advantages as properly. Throughout his trial in opposition to OpenAI, Musk acknowledged that AI “distilling” was actual — a course of during which one mannequin maker units up many faux accounts to ship prompts to a competitor as a way to be taught the way it works. Because the New York Instances reported, when a lawyer requested him if xAI had ever distilled expertise from OpenAI, Musk replied: “Usually AI firms distill different AI firms.”
Anthropic in February, accused three Chinese model makers of doing this to Claude. Presumably, Anthropic and Google really feel they’ve safeguards in opposition to SpaceX doing this whereas they’re utilizing its infrastructure. However internet hosting Anthropic’s compute might nonetheless give SpaceX higher visibility into how the corporate operates than most opponents would ever have.
There seems to be nothing however upside for Musk’s firm on this partnership for the time being. As for tomorrow, and because the three-year contracts ages, who is aware of?
Whenever you buy via hyperlinks in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t have an effect on our editorial independence.
