SpaceX to Earn $1.25 Billion Monthly from Anthropic AI Compute Deal
May 21, 2026
SpaceX to Earn $1.25 Billion Monthly from Anthropic AI Compute Deal
SpaceX has secured a landmark agreement with AI lab Anthropic, which will pay the aerospace company $1.25 billion per month through May 2029 for access to high-performance computing capacity. The deal, first inked in May, underscores the surging demand for AI infrastructure and positions SpaceX as a major player in the cloud computing market, competing directly with established providers like Google Cloud and Nvidia.
According to SpaceX’s S-1 filing, which outlines its plans for an initial public offering, Anthropic will utilize compute power from both SpaceX’s Colossus data center in Tennessee and the newer Colossus 2 facility. The compute capacity will be used for inference, the process by which AI models draw conclusions or generate outputs, as confirmed by Anthropic’s compute chief, Tom Brown. The filing notes that Anthropic is receiving a discounted rate for May and June, and either party can terminate the agreement with 90 days’ notice. If the deal runs its full course, SpaceX stands to generate over $40 billion in revenue from Anthropic alone.
The agreement is part of SpaceX’s broader strategy to monetize unused compute capacity within its infrastructure. The S-1 states, “This structure allows us to monetize unused compute capacity in our infrastructure, while still permitting reallocation of the capacity for our own internal initiatives if needed in the future.” SpaceX expects to ink similar deals in the future, tapping into what it estimates to be a $2.4 trillion market based on demand for AI compute and current GPU rental rates.
However, the deal comes with significant costs. The S-1 reveals that SpaceX is spending heavily on GPUs and cloud services, with AI-related operational losses ballooning fourfold last year to more than $6 billion, driven by higher cloud costs and GPU depreciation. In the first quarter of this year, losses more than doubled to nearly $2.5 billion. The filing lists “manufacturing our own GPUs” as one of the substantial capital expenditures SpaceX is planning, a move that would position the company as a direct competitor to Nvidia, which dominates the advanced GPU market.
SpaceX’s relationship with Google adds another layer of complexity. Through its Starlink subsidiary, SpaceX uses Google Cloud, and the two companies announced a partnership in 2021 to install Starlink ground stations at Google data centers. Yet, SpaceX has also become a competitor to Google Cloud by selling hundreds of megawatts of compute to Anthropic. Additionally, SpaceX is pursuing ambitious plans to build data centers in space, a project that Google is reportedly in talks to assist with, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The deal highlights the critical role of infrastructure in the AI race, as companies like Anthropic race to secure the massive computational resources needed to train and deploy advanced models. For SpaceX, the agreement not only provides a steady revenue stream but also validates its pivot into AI infrastructure, a market that could reshape the competitive landscape of cloud computing.
Source: businessinsider
