\n<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, xAI signed a major compute deal with Anthropic<\/a>, pledging billions of dollars a month for exclusive use of the company\u2019s Colossus cluster. It was a coup for both companies, giving xAI some much-needed revenue and helping Anthropic catch up in the never-ending race for compute.<\/p>\n But this morning on X<\/a>, Elon Musk downplayed exactly how much SpaceX had committed to the deal.<\/p>\n \u201cSpaceX has not committed to leasing Colossus for years, although it\u2019s possible that may be what happens,\u201d he said, replying to a user. \u201cThis is a 180 day lease with 90 day notice mutual cancellation thereafter. The short term was our request, not Anthropic\u2019s. We won\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Musk\u2019s statement directly contradicts SpaceX\u2019s recent S-1 filing<\/a>, which confirms the standard 90-day cancellation but presents the deal as a three-year agreement. Page F-62 of the filing reads:<\/p>\n On May 3, 2026, the Company entered into a cloud services agreement with Anthropic PBC, an AI research and development public benefit corporation, with respect to access to compute capacity. Pursuant to this agreement, the customer has agreed to pay a monthly fee through May 2029, with capacity ramping in May 2026 at a reduced fee. The agreement may be terminated by either party upon 90 days\u2019 notice. The customer will retain ownership and intellectual property rights in its content, AI models, and related data.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The key point here is that Anthropic \u201chas agreed to pay a monthly fee through May 2029\u201d \u2014 a pretty straightforward description of a three-year lease. The same language is repeated on F-96 and in slightly varied form (\u201cthe customer has agreed to pay us $1.25 billion per month through May 2029\u201d) on pages 13 and 146, so it\u2019s not as if there was a typo.<\/p>\n xAI did not respond to a request for clarification. <\/p>\n Maybe we can quibble about whether Anthropic agreeing to pay for a service means the same thing as SpaceX agreeing to provide that service, but that\u2019s not usually what \u201clease\u201d means. And why have a one-way lock-in if either party can terminate the deal with three months\u2019 notice anyway?<\/p>\n I don\u2019t have the deal in front of me, so I don\u2019t know what it says \u2014 and neither SpaceX<\/a> nor Anthropic<\/a> is saying anything about the duration of the deal in their announcements. Still, there should be a pretty straightforward fact of the matter here, and it\u2019s not the sort of thing you want to make false statements about during a company\u2019s quiet period.<\/p>\n As always, we should note that the SEC probably will not do anything \u2014 and even if they did, Elon probably wouldn\u2019t care. But this sort of does seem like a material misrepresentation made while marketing a security<\/a>, which is bad karma at the very least.<\/p>\n Sean O\u2019Kane contributed reporting to this article.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n\n