Elon Musk Says Anthropic-SpaceX Deal Is Short-Term 'Because We Might Need The Compute Back' — Here's What That Means

• The deal “may be renewed at a lower price, the same price, a higher price or it may end,” Musk said in an X post.
• Skeptics had previously raised concerns that a lack of disclosure about the tenure makes it hard to determine the deal's revenue, affecting potential investors' calculations for the SpaceX IPO.
• The shorter time frame could pose a capacity constraint for Anthropic, which is growing rapidly and gearing up for an IPO.

Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk has clarified that Anthropic’s agreement to lease computing capacity from xAI’s Colossus AI data centers is short-term, with provisions allowing either side to revise terms or terminate the arrangement.

That might pose a capacity constraint for the IPO-bound AI company at a time when access to cloud computing is becoming increasingly scarce amid surging demand for AI infrastructure. 

“This is a short-term deal,” Musk said in an X post on Monday. “It may be renewed at a lower price, the same price, a higher price or it may end. For what it’s worth, the short deal length was our request, not theirs, as I thought we might need the compute back at some point,” he said in a follow-on post.

In SpaceX’s IPO prospectus filed last month, the company said Anthropic, mentioned as “customer,” would pay “$1.25 billion per month through May 2029, with capacity ramping in May and June 2026 at a reduced fee. The agreements may be terminated by either party upon 90 days’ notice.” 

Whether Anthropic would pay SpaceX $15 billion per year over the next three years or pay substantially less over a much shorter period is a major consideration for prospective investors. 

In a series of X posts last week, Musk said “SpaceX has not committed to leasing Colossus for years,” and called the agreement a “180-day lease with 90-day notice mutual cancellation thereafter.” 

On Monday, SpaceX filed an amended prospectus, which included this material detail: “After the initial three-month period, the agreements may be terminated by either party upon 90 days’ notice.” 

Meanwhile, Anthropic has also filed its IPO papers with the regular on Monday. The company, last valued at $965 billion, did not disclose the number of shares it will sell or their price.

Anthropic, now regarded as bigger than OpenAI, has pursued a multi-cloud, multi-provider strategy rather than relying on a single cloud company. Its major compute and cloud infrastructure partners include Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and CoreWeave.

Notably, Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft are investors in the company.

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