Musk's SpaceX has rented out access to its supercomputer's 220,000 Nvidia GPUs and 300 megawatts of AI compute power to rival Anthropic — Musk says “No one set off my evil detector,” Anthropic also interested in orbital data centers

xAI Colossus Memphis Supercluster
(Image credit: xAI)

Anthropic announced in a press release on Wednesday that it has signed a deal with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to use the company's massive Colossus 1 data center. According to a corresponding announcement from SpaceXAI, the deal will give Anthropic access to all of the massive supercomputer. That's over 222,000 Nvidia GPUs — including powerful H100 and H200 chips alongside next-generation GB200 accelerator systems — and 300 megawatts plus of compute power.

Anthropic says this additional capacity will go toward improving the experience for paid Claude users — Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise subscribers — via three key changes. Effective yesterday, Claude Code’s five-hour rate limits have doubled for all paid tiers. The company has also removed the peak hours limit reduction for Pro and Max. Lastly, it has “considerably” raised the API rate limits, the volume of requests developers can make, for Claude Opus models.

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The Colossus 1 deal means that the whole first-generation cluster, originally built to power xAI’s own Grok models, is now powering one of its direct AI rivals, as the company focuses on building Colossus 2. In an X post, Musk said he gave the green light to lease Colossus 1 to Anthropic after spending time with senior members of the company to “understand what they do to ensure Claude is good for humanity.” He claimed he “was impressed,” saying, “No one set off my evil detector.” The statement is a stark reversal of comments Musk made earlier this year about Anthropic, when he called Claude “misanthropic and evil."

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Etiido Uko
News Contributor

Etiido Uko is a news contributor for Tom's Hardware covering the latest updates in big tech and the PC industry. He is a mechanical engineer and senior technical writer with over nine years of experience in documentation and reporting. He is deeply passionate about all things engineering and technology, and is an expert in gadgets, manufacturing, robotics, automotive, and aerospace.

  • rluker5
    What does this mean for xAI?
    Reply
  • jp7189
    rluker5 said:
    What does this mean for xAI?
    ..right.. you would hope they would get a tech benefit rather than a simple money exchange.
    Reply
  • y2k
    AI Bubble ?
    Reply
  • usertests
    rluker5 said:
    What does this mean for xAI?
    The Information claimed they were only getting 11% utilization of their GPUs.

    xAI Is Reportedly Using Just 11% of Its 550,000 NVIDIA GPUs, While Meta and Google Squeeze Out 43-46% From Their Fleets
    That's not sustainable. If they can rent it out, they can make their money back, even if Grok does badly.

    Demand is so high that it's not about shopping between AWS, xAI, and competing clouds. It's about grabbing what you can get ASAP, even if you can't own it.
    Reply
  • rluker5
    usertests said:
    The Information claimed they were only getting 11% utilization of their GPUs.

    xAI Is Reportedly Using Just 11% of Its 550,000 NVIDIA GPUs, While Meta and Google Squeeze Out 43-46% From Their Fleets
    That's not sustainable. If they can rent it out, they can make their money back, even if Grok does badly.

    Demand is so high that it's not about shopping between AWS, xAI, and competing clouds. It's about grabbing what you can get ASAP, even if you can't own it.
    I think that Colossus is most of xAI's compute. Are they basically giving up on using their own data center for AI for what I'm assuming are financial reasons?
    Reply
  • ejolson
    The way I see it, Elon Musk created xAI to trouble OpenAI after Sam Altman kicked him out and in order to take ChatGPT commercial. Cooperating with Anthropic is sure to cause even more trouble.
    Reply
  • Bikki
    The “dreaming” feature is interesting, it is a staple feature on openclaw for a long time. Anthropic cut off openclaw while bringing in its feature and keep original feature name is one very interesting move.
    Reply
  • DS426
    Dreaming? It's just learning. Dreaming just sounds like more hallucinations.

    Marketing these days, pfft.
    Reply