Elon Musk opens xAI data centers to Anthropic in surprise AI deal
Anthropic has struck an unexpected deal with Elon Musk-owned SpaceX to expand computing capacity for its Claude AI models.Anthropic secured 300MW of compute capacity from SpaceXs Colossus 1 facility, which houses more than 220,000 Nvidia processors.Elon Musk said he approved the deal after meeting Anthropic leaders and being impressed by their efforts to keep Claude “good for humanity.”Anthropic said the added computing power will help expand Claude Code usage limits and support new AI features announced at its developer conference. The agreement gives Anthropic access to 300 megawatts of new compute power from SpaceX‘s Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee, which was originally built to support xAI’s Grok chatbot. The facility reportedly contains more than 220,000 Nvidia processors and is expected to provide the extra capacity within a month. The deal comes as Anthropic faces growing demand for products such as Claude Code, its AI coding assistant. Anthropic has also discussed partnering with SpaceX on future orbital data center projects that could eventually deliver several gigawatts of compute power. The agreement stands out because top AI firms rarely rent infrastructure to direct rivals in the race for advanced AI models. Musk has repeatedly criticized Anthropic in the past and previously accused the company