Anthropic to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion monthly for computing power as it nears first profit

Anthropic will pay xAI $1.25 billion per month for compute | TechCrunch

Earlier this month, Anthropic surprised the AI world with a deal to buy 300 megawatts worth of compute -- securing the entire output of the Colossus 1 data center near Memphis, Tennessee. Turns out, compute at that scale isn't cheap. Anthropic will be paying xAI $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, with a discounted rate for the first two months as xAI completes its ramp-up. All told, the deal could bring xAI over $40 billion in revenue. Details of the transaction emerged from SpaceX's S-1 filing with the SEC. The deal, the company said, "allows us to monetize unused compute capacity in our infrastructure." The terms of the deal allow either side to terminate the contract with 90 days' notice. "We expect to enter into additional similar services contracts," the filing stated. The move has given xAI a hybrid stance in the AI market. Most players either build data centers for themselves or build data centers for others to use -- rarely both simultaneously. This emerging model, sometimes called a "neocloud," lets AI companies offset infrastructure costs by acting as a cloud provider when their own usage falls short of capacity. SpaceX argues the arrangement is a savvy use of resources. "We believe our dual monetization strategy provides multiple pathways to generate returns on invested capital," it wrote. But the subtext is hard to miss. xAI appears to have overbuilt its compute capacity and needed to find a way to monetize it ahead of a public offering. Usage of Grok -- xAI's flagship AI assistant -- has dropped significantly in recent months, freeing up servers that the company is now selling to one of its closest competitors.

SpaceX IPO Filing Reveals Anthropic Is Paying $15 Billion a Year to Access Its Data Centers

Anthropic has agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month through May of 2029 for access to cloud computing infrastructure, a long-awaited US regulatory filing revealed on Wednesday. In other words, Anthropic will be sending a rival artificial intelligence lab roughly $15 billion a year, an extraordinary sum that demonstrates how access to compute has become one of the defining bottlenecks in the race to develop advanced artificial intelligence. Anthropic and SpaceX announced a deal earlier this month that gives the Claude developer access to GPUs at Colossus and Colossus II, a pair of data centers straddling Tennessee and Mississippi with more than one gigawatt of computing power. SpaceX had rushed to build the facilities for its xAI unit, which develops the Grok AI chatbot, but Musk said his company didn't need all of their computing capacity in the end. Terms of the deal had not been previously disclosed. Anthropic is paying an unspecified reduced fee for May and June before the $1.25 billion per month rate takes effect, SpaceX said in its S-1 regulatory filing. The eye-popping figure is a sign of how hungry Anthropic is for computing resources needed to power products like its increasingly popular AI coding tools. The company's revenue for the second quarter of 2026 is expected to exceed $10 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. An Anthropic spokesperson confirmed the figures to WIRED. SpaceX did not immediately respond to WIRED's request for comment. SpaceX says it expects to "enter into additional similar services contracts" around its compute infrastructure and will continue using its data centers for itself. "We have sufficient capacity to provide compute for our own AI models, including support of our training and inference demands, and to satisfy the obligations under these agreements," the filing states. "We believe our dual monetization strategy provides multiple pathways to generate returns on invested capital." The filing details SpaceX's business opportunities and risks ahead of an initial public offering. SpaceX is pursuing the largest IPO in history, with hopes of raising about $75 billion at a valuation of $1.75 trillion. The company filed its initial paperwork confidentially with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on April 1, allowing time to make edits based on feedback from the regulator. The filing released on Wednesday is the cleaned-up version, though additional changes could come before it debuts on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker SPCX, which could reportedly come as soon as June 12. SpaceX, including X and xAI, generated nearly $4.7 billion in revenue and lost almost $4.3 billion in the first quarter of this year, according to the filing. Last year, SpaceX generated $18.7 billion in revenue but lost $4.9 billion after heavy spending to develop AI technologies and a bigger rocket, according to the filing. The S-1 is meant to help potential investors better understand the company and the challenges it faces. One widespread concern is the amount of power Musk holds over SpaceX and whether there are enough safeguards to hold the cofounder and CEO in check. Excerpts of the IPO filing seen by Reuters before it was published showed that the only person who can fire Musk is the billionaire himself. The documents also revealed that he will be able to maintain control of the company's board. In addition, he and his allies will have outsized voting power, allowing them to beat back attempts by activist shareholders to derail company endeavors. SpaceX also plans to exercise provisions of Texas law to fend off hostile takeovers and the removal of executives or board members.

Anthropic nears first quarterly profit, agrees to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion monthly for computing power

SAN FRANCISCO, May 20 (Reuters) - Anthropic is closing in on its first quarterly operating profit, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters, as its sales eclipse the enormous costs to develop and deploy artificial intelligence. In recent fundraising materials, the San Francisco-based startup apprised investors that its June quarter sales could reach at least $10.9 billion, more than double its $4.8 ⁠billion in revenue for the just-ended March quarter, the person said. That will propel its second-quarter operating profit to an expected $559 million, said the person, on condition of anonymity. The Wall Street Journal reported the figures earlier on Wednesday. Anthropic's financials underscore how demand for the lab's Claude AI has jumped, as software developers use the technology to handle their computer programming and some enterprises deploy its top-shelf model Mythos to unearth vulnerabilities in their code. The profit is rare for an AI industry that is grappling with the technology's high costs. One such expense, in the ⁠form of AI's voracious demand for computing power, was also disclosed on Wednesday in the IPO filing of SpaceX, Elon Musk's rival space and AI company. SpaceX said Anthropic had agreed to pay it $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, in deals for compute capacity that now include both of SpaceX's ⁠AI training data center clusters, Colossus and Colossus II. Either Anthropic or SpaceX can terminate the agreements with 90 days' notice, and fees would be reduced during the capacity ramp-up this month and next, the ⁠filing said. Musk posted on X that SpaceX was in discussions with other companies about "offering AI compute as a service at significant scale," which would be a boost as its ⁠AI segment remains in the red. SpaceX's AI segment lost about $2.5 billion from operations in the March quarter, on segment revenue of $818 million, its IPO filing showed. Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco and Aditya Soni in Bangalore; Editing by Kenneth Li and Chris Reese Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Anthropic is paying SpaceX $15 billion per year

Why it matters: It's a massive bill but comes as Anthropic's revenue is taking off and the company is hampered by a lack of compute power. * It also is a significant boost to SpaceX, whose annual revenue is only around $18 billion per year. Driving the news: Anthropic and SpaceX announced their deal last month, but did not initially provide financial details. * SpaceX announced the monthly payments as part of its filing for an initial public offering, released Wednesday. It said the payments would be reduced for May and June as the deal ramps up. * Anthropic also announced moments before the filing became public that it was expanding beyond SpaceX's Colossus 1 facility to Colossus 2 as well. * "We're expanding our partnership with SpaceX, and will be scaling up on (Nvidia) GB200 capacity in Colossus 2 throughout June," Anthropic co-founder and chief compute officer Tom Brown said on X. SpaceX isn't done leasing out computing either. * "We expect to enter into additional similar services contracts," it said in the filing. "We have sufficient capacity to provide compute for our own AI models, including support of our training and inference demands, and to satisfy the obligations under these agreements. " Yes, but: Either Anthropic or SpaceX can exit the deal with 90 days' notice, per the filing.

Anthropic nears first quarterly profit, agrees to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion monthly for computing power

SAN FRANCISCO, May 20 (Reuters) - Anthropic is closing in on its first quarterly operating profit, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters, as its sales eclipse the enormous costs to develop and deploy artificial intelligence. In recent fundraising materials, the San Francisco-based startup apprised investors that its June quarter sales could reach at least $10.9 billion, more than double its $4.8 billion in revenue for the just-ended March quarter, the person said. That will propel its second-quarter operating profit to an expected $559 million, said the person, on condition of anonymity. The Wall Street Journal reported the figures earlier on Wednesday. Anthropic's financials underscore how demand for the lab's Claude AI has jumped, as software developers use the technology to handle their computer programming and some enterprises deploy its top-shelf model Mythos to unearth vulnerabilities in their code. The profit is rare for an AI industry that is grappling with the technology's high costs. One such expense, in the form of AI's voracious demand for computing power, was also disclosed on Wednesday in the IPO filing of SpaceX, Elon Musk's rival space and AI company. SpaceX said Anthropic had agreed to pay it $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, in deals for compute capacity that now include both of SpaceX's AI training data center clusters, Colossus and Colossus II. Either Anthropic or SpaceX can terminate the agreements with 90 days' notice, and fees would be reduced during the capacity ramp-up this month and next, the filing said. Musk posted on X that SpaceX was in discussions with other companies about "offering AI compute as a service at significant scale," which would be a boost as its AI segment remains in the red. SpaceX's AI segment lost about $2.5 billion from operations in the March quarter, on segment revenue of $818 million, its IPO filing showed. (Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco and Aditya Soni in Bangalore; Editing by Kenneth Li and Chris Reese)