SpaceX says Anthropic AI lease is six months, not multi‑year

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk clarified on Thursday that the company's high-profile computing agreement with artificial intelligence firm Anthropic is a six-month lease, not a long-term contract. The clarification, made in posts on Musk's social media platform X, addresses details of a deal that had been featured in SpaceX's recent filing for an initial public offering.

Under the terms, Anthropic will pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month for access to more than 300 megawatts of computing capacity from the Colossus data center clusters in Memphis, Tennessee. The initial lease period is 180 days, after which either company can terminate the agreement with 90 days' notice. Musk stated that the short-term nature of the lease was SpaceX's request, not Anthropic's. He added that while the arrangement could potentially extend for multiple years, the company wanted flexibility.

"We won't leave them hanging and will provide a reasonable off-ramp, but if compute gets super tight I said we might need it back at some point," Musk wrote, indicating that SpaceX might need to reclaim the computing capacity for its own internal needs.

The clarification comes as SpaceX prepares for its IPO, which is...