Elon Musk’s SpaceX/xAI has signed a deal to provide Anthropic access to its Colossus 1 AI supercomputer cluster. The added compute power will improve capacity for Claude Pro and Claude Max users. The partnership pairs two AI companies with sharply different positions on regulation and politics, particularly regarding the Trump administration.
SpaceX—which merged with xAI earlier this year—is teaming up with Anthropic to help power Claude. The companies announced that Anthropic will gain access to Colossus 1, xAI’s massive AI supercomputer cluster.
The agreement provides more than 300 megawatts of additional compute capacity. Anthropic said it will improve service for Claude Pro and Claude Max subscribers.
“In the next few days, we’ll be ramping up Claude inference on Colossus. Grateful to be partnering with SpaceX here,” Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown wrote on X. In a follow-up post, Musk said conversations with senior Anthropic staff convinced him the company was approaching AI development responsibly.
“Everyone I met was highly competent and cared a great deal about doing the right thing,” Musk wrote. Musk added that “SpaceXAI” had already moved training to Colossus 2, a much larger next-generation cluster.
The partnership comes as Musk and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei represent different camps. Musk has aligned closely with Trump and the U.S. Departments of Justice and Defense. Anthropic has positioned itself as a strong advocate for responsible AI safety standards.
That stance recently put the company in conflict with the Trump administration and the Pentagon. Anthropic refused demands to allow unrestricted military use of Claude, citing safeguards against mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.
Trump later ordered federal agencies to phase out Anthropic’s technology. Pentagon officials argued military contractors must permit “any lawful use” of AI systems used by the government.
In February, Elon Musk folded xAI into SpaceX, arguing Earth-based AI data centers face growth limits. Musk clarified on X that the xAI entity will be dissolved and that part of the business will be known as “SpaceXAI”.
Also in March, Musk accused Anthropic of being “misanthropic” after the Claude developer raised $30 billion in funding at a $380 billion valuation. Despite previous harsh words, Anthropic said the SpaceX deal adds to a growing list of infrastructure partnerships.
“As part of this agreement, we have also expressed interest in partnering with SpaceX to develop multiple gigawatts of orbital AI compute capacity,” Anthropic said in a statement. SpaceX said terrestrial power and cooling infrastructure may not scale fast enough for future AI systems.
“If engineering challenges can be overcome, space-based compute offers near-limitless sustainable power with less impact on Earth,” the company said.
