Anthropic is set to tap into Elon Musk's Colossus 1 supercomputer. Behind the surprise deal lie a compute crunch, a looming IPO, and a remarkable about-face by Musk.
At its developer conference in San Francisco, Anthropic announced an agreement with Musk's SpaceXAI to use the Colossus 1 data center in Memphis. According to Wired, the deal gives Anthropic access to more than 300 megawatts of capacity and roughly 220,000 Nvidia GPUs. The New York Times reports that Anthropic is taking all of Colossus 1's computing capacity. But more interesting than the raw numbers is why this deal is happening at all.
Musk went from calling Anthropic "evil" to signing a deal
Earlier this year, Musk called Anthropic "misanthropic" and "evil" on X, claiming without evidence that the company's models showed racial and sexual biases. The tone has shifted dramatically since then. Musk now writes on X that he "spent a lot of time last week with senior members of the Anthropic team to understand what they do to ensure Claude is good for humanity and was impressed."
The change of heart lines up with a business reality. SpaceXAI, the company formed in early 2026 by the merger of xAI and SpaceX, is planning to go public as soon as next month. At this stage, a paying enterprise customer is worth more than a rhetorical adversary. Colossus 1 was built in record time and is primarily intended for Grok, the company's in-house model. The fact that a direct competitor is now moving in suggests Grok alone can't economically justify the facility. According to Musk, Colossus 2 is currently being used to train the next generation of Grok.
