Musk walks back the Anthropic Colossus deal to a six-month lease

SpaceX clarified that its Memphis Colossus 1 compute cluster lease to Anthropic is a 180-day base term with a mutual 90-day cancellation right on either side. The clarification contradicts earlier reporting that framed the arrangement as a $1.25bn-per-month, three-year deal running through May 2029. The short term was described as SpaceX’s request, with an off-ramp provided to avoid leaving Anthropic without options. The timing of the clarification coincides with SpaceX’s IPO roadshow period after filing an S-1 that mentions a 90-day mutual cancellation provision. Colossus 1 contains more than 220,000 Nvidia GPUs and over 300 megawatts of compute capacity, and Anthropic used the added capacity to raise rate limits for Claude Code and Opus API customers.

"SpaceX did not commit to a multi-year lease of its Memphis Colossus 1 cluster to Anthropic, Elon Musk said on Wednesday, describing the agreement as 180 days with a 90-day mutual cancellation right. Elon Musk has clarified that SpaceX did not commit to a multi-year lease of its Colossus 1 data centre to Anthropic, contradicting widely reported framing of the deal as a $1.25bn-per-month, three-year arrangement running through May 2029."

"The agreement, Musk said in posts on his X account on Wednesday, is in fact a 180-day base lease with a mutual 90-day cancellation right on either side after that. The clarification matters because it lands inside the SpaceX IPO roadshow window. The company filed for its public listing last week."

"The S-1 mentions a 90-day mutual cancellation provision on the Anthropic agreement but does not, as initially reported, anchor the deal at the six-month base term Musk has now publicly named. The disclosure gap, combined with the visible revision of the deal duration in public Musk statements, will be one of the questions analysts and prospective LPs press on during the roadshow that starts in earnest in June."

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