Anthropic Leases xAI's Colossus 1 in Surprise Deal
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- Anthropic signed a deal to lease full capacity of SpaceX's Colossus 1 data center in Memphis from xAI (per Wired, Capacity)
- Elon Musk said he met with senior Anthropic staff to 'ensure Claude is good for humanity' and was impressed — a sharp reversal from calling the company 'evil' and predicting it would become 'Misanthropic'
- xAI had already migrated its own training to Colossus 2, freeing Colossus 1 for the Anthropic lease (per Musk's own X post)
- Anthropic's '80x growth blew past its own infrastructure,' forcing the company to seek outside compute capacity (per The Decoder)
- The Information separately reports Anthropic plans to spend ~$200B on Google's Cloud and chips over five years — 40%+ of the revenue backlog Google disclosed last week
- The deal reportedly includes a termination clause allowing xAI to reclaim compute 'if their AI engages in actions that harm humanity' (per @deredleritt3r), giving Musk a potential kill-switch over his former rival
Why it matters: Anthropic's 80x growth outpaced its own infrastructure so severely that it was forced to rent compute from a CEO who publicly labeled it 'evil.' xAI keeps Colossus 2 for its own training and monetizes the older Colossus 1, repositioning SpaceXAI as a compute landlord that can supply rival frontier labs — while the reported 'harm to humanity' termination clause hands Musk a kill-switch over his new tenant.
