Should Anthropic trust Elon Musk to host its model? After an X user hinted that Musk could one day wake up and launch an AI lab from SpaceX’s servers as a way to kneel to his rivals, Musk responded with glowing praise for the AI lab. Such tricks are “not my style,” he said.
“I was clearly wrong about Antropic,” Musk said Thursday, referring to a September 2025 post on X, saying “a win was not among the possible outcomes for Antropic.” Of course, even at that point, Anthropic could already be considered a winner. The company reportedly has the largest enterprise AI market share.
There seems to be an era of anti-humanism behind Mr. Musk, not just X. As of July 2026, Anthropic is one of SpaceX’s largest customers.
To recap, Anthropic signed an agreement in May to purchase 300 megawatts of compute, the entire output of xAI’s Colossus 1 data center near Memphis, Tennessee. (Musk’s xAI merged with SpaceX in February.) Anthropic agreed to pay $1.25 billion a month through May 2029, a deal worth about $40 billion in revenue for SpaceX’s xAI division. Incidentally, Google also signed a contract to rent SpaceX’s infrastructure for $920 million per month until June 2029.
Musk insisted that this was not a risky decision by Anthropic, but rather an act of admiration for its rival.
“They are clearly the leaders in AI right now. No company has released a model as good as Mythos/Fable, and they will definitely complete Mythos 2 soon. And even if they are competitors, I would never cut them down in a way that hurts them too much. That’s not my style,” he wrote.
As evidence of his non-oppressive style, he pointed to Tesla’s 2014 decision (outlined in a since-deleted company blog post and now kept under the Patent Pledge) not to file patent lawsuits against anyone who wants to use its technology in good faith. He also noted that Tesla has opened up its Supercharger network and charging port design to competitors.
“SpaceX is launching competing satellite systems without raising prices or using unfair terms. On this platform, even my worst enemy can attack me,” he wrote, citing another example.
Of course, Mr. Musk is not entirely above strategies targeting rivals, especially those he has had relationships with in the past. For example, he sued OpenAI.
However, Anthropic doesn’t have to rely on Musk sticking to his “style.” If Musk were to suddenly shut down Anthropic’s infrastructure, there would certainly be contractual implications. It goes without saying that SpaceX would benefit greatly from maintaining this contract. Not only is Anthropic paying handsomely, but SpaceX’s engineers may learn how to build and support Anthropic’s rapidly growing AI, just like Amazon’s engineers.
This proximity may have other benefits as well. During the trial against OpenAI, Musk acknowledged that “distillation” of AI is a reality. This is a process where one model maker sets up many fake accounts and prompts competitors to learn how it works. The New York Times reported that when a lawyer asked if xAI had ever extracted technology from OpenAI, Musk replied, “Generally speaking, AI companies extract other AI companies.”
In February, Anthropic accused three Chinese model makers of doing this to Claude. Perhaps Anthropic and Google feel they have a safeguard against SpaceX doing this while using their infrastructure. But hosting Anthropic’s computing could give SpaceX more visibility into the company’s operations than most of its competitors.
For now, the partnership appears to have only positive aspects for Musk’s company. No one knows what tomorrow will bring and when his three-year contract expires.
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