Colossus Rental to Anthropic Lasts Six Months, Not Three Years: What Musk Says
A contract presented as three years and over 40 billion dollars in total becomes, in the words of its own supplier, a six-month lease cancellable by both parties. This was stated by Elon Musk in a post on X, publicly downscaling the agreement under which Anthropic gained access to the computing power of the Colossus 1 data center in Memphis.
Musk wrote that SpaceX has not committed to leasing Colossus for years, although it’s possible that may be what happens, and described the agreement as a 180-day lease with mutual cancellation rights after 90 days once the base period expires. The clarification, he added, reflects a request from SpaceX and not from Anthropic: the company will not leave the counterpart without notice and will provide a reasonable exit, but if internal computing demand were to increase, the need to reclaim that capacity could arise.
SpaceX has not committed to leasing Colossus for years, although it’s possible that may be what happens. This is a 180-day lease with 90-day notice mutual cancellation thereafter. The short term was our request, not Anthropic’s. We won’t leave them hanging and will provide a
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The problem is that this reading contradicts what SpaceX itself put in writing in the prospectus filed for listing. Like the document that had previously made public the economic terms of the agreement, the S-1 indicates that Anthropic has agreed to pay a monthly fee until May 2029, with the capacity at a reduced rate starting from May 2026, and the option for either party to cancel with 90 days’ notice. The figure is 1.25 billion dollars a month: over three years, it could potentially be more than 40 billion.
What Changes Between the Two Readings
The difference between the two versions is substantial: a base period of 180 days with cancellation 90 days after the expiration is a different commercial commitment than a 36-month contract. For SpaceX, the short term retains the flexibility to reclaim computing power if the demand for training Grok or other internal needs were to grow. For Anthropic, it means that the capacity of Colossus is a useful bridge in the short term, and not the long-term infrastructural anchor that many analysts had perceived it to be.
The discrepancy is accurately documented by the text of page F-62 of the prospectus, which reports the agreement signed on May 3, 2026, and the provision on monthly payments until May 2029. The same wording, in identical or almost identical form, also occurs on pages F-96, 13, and 146, making it difficult to attribute it to a typo. The prospectus mentions the 90-day cancellation clause, but does not set the base period of six months that Musk has now publicly named.
The IPO Window Issue
The delicate point concerns transparency obligations. SpaceX is a private company that has filed for listing: the roadshow is expected from June 8, with the listing on Nasdaq anticipated in the immediate following days, in an operation aiming to raise up to 75 billion dollars at a valuation of 1750-2000 billion.
Relevant commercial agreements for revenues fall among the information that needs to be communicated. A three-year agreement with a cumulative value of around 45 billion is very different from a six-month lease that, in the absence of renewal, is worth at most 7.5 billion.
Furthermore, the agreement had already been viewed as the monetization of excess capacity: xAI had shifted the training of its models to Colossus 2, which is more recent and has a larger capacity, leaving Colossus 1 available for external customers.
We had discussed this at the announcement of the agreement when Anthropic had immediately used the additional computing margin to raise the usage limits on Claude Code and the Opus APIs, citing the agreement with SpaceX.
Neither SpaceX nor Anthropic has commented on the clarification through formal channels. The fact remains that a public statement contradicting its own prospectus, during the quiet period preceding a listing, is exactly the type of statement on which it would be advisable to avoid missteps.