How long is Anthropic’s lease with SpaceX? Opinions vary. - BERITAJA

Earlier this month, xAI signed a awesome compute woody pinch Anthropic, pledging billions of dollars a period for exclusive usage of the company’s Colossus cluster. It was a coup for some companies, giving xAI immoderate much-needed gross and helping Anthropic drawback up successful the never-ending title for compute.

But this greeting connected X, Elon Musk downplayed precisely really overmuch SpaceX had committed to the deal.

“SpaceX has not committed to leasing Colossus for years, though it’s imaginable that whitethorn beryllium what happens,” he said, replying to a user. “This is simply a 180 time lease pinch 90 time announcement communal cancellation thereafter. The short word was our request, not Anthropic’s. We won’t time off them hanging and will supply a reasonable off-ramp, but if compute gets ace tight I said we mightiness request it backmost astatine immoderate point.”

Musk’s connection straight contradicts SpaceX’s recent S-1 filing, which confirms the modular 90-day cancellation but presents the woody arsenic a three-year agreement. Page F-62 of the filing reads:

On May 3, 2026, the Company entered into a unreality services statement pinch Anthropic PBC, an AI investigation and improvement nationalist use corporation, pinch respect to entree to compute capacity. Pursuant to this agreement, the customer has agreed to salary a monthly interest done May 2029, pinch capacity ramping successful May 2026 astatine a reduced fee. The statement whitethorn beryllium terminated by either statement upon 90 days’ notice. The customer will clasp ownership and intelligence spot authorities successful its content, AI models, and related data.

The cardinal constituent present is that Anthropic “has agreed to salary a monthly interest done May 2029” — a beautiful straightforward explanation of a three-year lease. The aforesaid connection is repeated connected F-96 and successful somewhat varied shape (“the customer has agreed to salary america $1.25 cardinal per period done May 2029”) connected pages 13 and 146, truthful it’s not arsenic if location was a typo.

xAI did not respond to a petition for clarification.

Maybe we could quibble about whether Anthropic agreeing to salary for a work intends the aforesaid point arsenic SpaceX agreeing to supply that service, but that’s not usually what “lease” means. And why person a one-way lock-in if either statement could terminate the woody pinch 3 months’ announcement anyway?

I don’t person the woody successful beforehand of me, truthful I don’t cognize what it says — and neither SpaceX nor Anthropic is saying thing about the long of the woody successful their announcements. Still, location should beryllium a beautiful straightforward truth of the matter here, and it’s not the benignant of point you want to make mendacious statements about during a company’s quiet period.

As always, we should statement that the SEC about apt will not do thing — and moreover if they did, Elon about apt wouldn’t care. But this benignant of does look for illustration a worldly misrepresentation made while trading a security, which is bad karma astatine the very least.

Sean O’Kane contributed reporting to this article.