Musk Walks Back Anthropic Colossus Deal to Six-Month Lease
May 28, 2026 – 8:26 am
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SpaceX did not commit to a multi-year lease of its Memphis Colossus 1 cluster to Anthropic, Elon Musk clarified on Wednesday, describing the agreement as a six-month base lease with a 90-day mutual cancellation right after that.
Musk stated via his X account:
"We won’t 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."
This clarification is significant as it falls within SpaceX’s IPO roadshow window, with the company having filed for its public listing last week. The S-1 filing mentions a 90-day mutual cancellation provision on the Anthropic agreement but does not specify the six-month base term Musk has now publicly revealed.
The original deal, as initially reported, was framed as a $1.25bn-per-month, three-year arrangement running through May 2029. However, Musk’s latest statement revises this duration, highlighting a short-term commitment at the request of SpaceX rather than Anthropic.
The underlying transaction is worth noting:
Anthropic announced earlier this month that it had gained access to full compute capacity at Colossus 1, a Memphis facility housing over 220,000 Nvidia GPUs and providing 300 megawatts of power. The published monthly rent figure was $1.25bn, prompting Anthropic to increase rate limits on its Claude Code and Opus API customers.
The recent change in lease term implies that for SpaceX, the short-term commitment offers flexibility to reclaim compute resources if internal demands spike. For Anthropic, the six-month lease provides a temporary bridge rather than a long-term data center anchor as initially assumed.
Analysts and prospective investors will likely press questions about this deal during SpaceX’s roadshow starting in June, especially considering the potential material impact on revenue disclosure requirements for a private company going public.