Google to pay SpaceX $920 million monthly for AI compute capacity in $30 billion deal

Reviewed byNidhi Govil

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Google has secured access to approximately 110,000 NVIDIA GPUs from SpaceX in a deal worth potentially $30 billion through 2029. The cloud services agreement, announced days before SpaceX's historic IPO, positions Elon Musk's company as a major AI infrastructure provider. Combined with a similar Anthropic deal, SpaceX's compute agreements are worth over $70 billion in total.

SpaceX Google Deal Brings $920 Million Monthly Revenue

SpaceX announced a multi-year cloud services agreement with Alphabet's Google on Friday, just one week before its highly anticipated initial public offering

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. Under the terms, Google to pay SpaceX $920 million per month from October 2026 through June 2029 for access to approximately 110,000 NVIDIA GPUs, CPUs, memory, and other related components housed in SpaceX data centers

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. The deal could earn SpaceX about $30 billion in total, establishing the rocket company as a significant AI infrastructure provider

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Source: Interesting Engineering

Source: Interesting Engineering

The agreement includes a capacity ramp-up period through September 2026 at reduced fees before full monthly payments begin

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. A Google Cloud spokesperson described the agreement as "a short-term, timely agreement to ensure we have bridge capacity to meet surging customer demand for our agent platform, Gemini Enterprise, which has been even higher than we expected"

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. This positions the deal as critical infrastructure for Gemini Enterprise services as Google Cloud works to fulfill contracts totaling $460 billion

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AI Compute Capacity Deal Includes Termination Clauses

The SpaceX Google deal contains specific performance requirements and exit provisions. If SpaceX fails to deliver access to the committed amount of GPUs by September 30, 2026, Google may immediately terminate the agreement or accept the number of GPUs provided with a corresponding pro-rata reduction in monthly fees after a one-month grace period

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. After December 31, 2026, either party may terminate the agreement by providing 90 days' notice

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. Google will retain ownership of and all intellectual property rights in its content, AI models, and associated data

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SpaceX IPO Timing and xAI Integration

The announcement arrives just days before SpaceX's stock is expected to start trading on the Nasdaq exchange next week

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. Paperwork filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows the company aims to raise around $75 billion at a valuation of around $1.75 trillion, making it the largest in history

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. The deal follows SpaceX's merger in February with xAI, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, in a transaction that valued the combined entity at $1.25 trillion

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Source: TechCrunch

Source: TechCrunch

Anthropic Deal Creates $70 Billion Compute Portfolio

The Google agreement mirrors a similar deal SpaceX announced with Anthropic in late May. Anthropic agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month through 2029 to rent compute from one of its Colossus data centers near Memphis, Tennessee, that xAI originally built for its own AI efforts

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. The Colossus 1 facility houses more than 220,000 Nvidia processors and will give the Claude chatbot maker 300 megawatts of new capacity

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. On an annual basis, SpaceX's compute access deals with Anthropic and Google are worth roughly $26 billion combined

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. SpaceX's disclosed compute-capacity agreements are worth more than $70 billion in aggregate, assuming neither contract is terminated before its scheduled end date

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AI Computing Power Scarcity Drives Infrastructure Deals

The agreement highlights how even the world's largest tech firms now face pressure securing enough AI hardware

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. Nvidia AI chips remain the most critical resource for training and operating large AI models

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. Google's need for cloud capacity underscores the intense competition in the global race to dominate AI, where access to computing infrastructure has become a strategic bottleneck. Google is a longtime investor in SpaceX, with its stake expected to be worth more than $100 billion after the IPO

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. The search giant has also explored using SpaceX as a launch partner as Google seeks to put data centers in space, an effort known as Project Suncatcher

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. Musk has increasingly leaned into AI in the run-up to SpaceX's going public, promoting xAI's computing power as an asset and announcing a $60 billion deal in April to acquire the AI start-up Cursor, which makes a code-writing assistant

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Source: PYMNTS

Source: PYMNTS

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