Elon Musk Praises Anthropic, Promises Not to Cut Off Competitor from SpaceX Servers

Elon Musk, who previously expressed skepticism about Anthropic's prospects, now acknowledges it as the leader in artificial intelligence. After users on X suggested that Musk could suddenly boot the AI lab from SpaceX servers, he responded with praise. "I was clearly wrong about Anthropic," Musk wrote, referring to his September 2025 post where he claimed winning was not in the cards for Anthropic. However, even then, the company was reported to have the largest AI market share among enterprises.

As of July 2026, Anthropic is one of SpaceX's largest customers. In May, it signed a deal to buy 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 per month through May 2029, a deal worth about $40 billion in revenue for SpaceX's xAI unit. Google also signed a deal to rent SpaceX infrastructure through June 2029 for $920 million per month.

Musk insists that Anthropic's decision was not dangerous and expresses admiration for the rival. "They are obviously currently the leader in AI. No company has released a model as good as Mythos/Fable and they will undoubtedly have Mythos 2 ready soon. And I would never cut them off in a way that hurt them badly, even as a competitor. That's not my style," he wrote. As proof, he cited Tesla's 2014 decision not to initiate patent lawsuits against good-faith users of its technology, as well as opening its Supercharger network to competitors. He also noted that SpaceX launches competing satellite systems without unfair terms.

Musk is not above tactics against rivals—he sued OpenAI, for instance. However, Anthropic does not rely solely on Musk's adherence to his "style." The contract would have consequences if Musk suddenly shut down infrastructure. Moreover, SpaceX benefits greatly from the deal financially and through engineering insights. The proximity could also provide other advantages—during his trial against OpenAI, Musk acknowledged that AI distillation is real, where one company uses fake accounts to learn from a competitor. Anthropic accused three Chinese model makers of this in February. While there are risks of SpaceX gaining visibility into Anthropic's operations, currently Musk's company sees only upside in this partnership.