Elon Musk said on Wednesday that SpaceX is now selling artificial intelligence computing power at "significant scale," pointing to an expanded agreement that gives Anthropic access to the company's Colossus data center capacity as the space venture prepares for a public listing.
Musk Says SpaceX Is Selling AI Compute
"As the recently expanded partnership with @AnthropicAI demonstrates, @SpaceX is offering AI compute as a service at significant scale," Musk wrote on X. "We are in discussions with other companies to do the same. Over time, especially with orbital data centers, we expect to serve AI at extremely high scale."
The comments came after SpaceX filed its long-awaited initial public offering documents on Wednesday. The filing disclosed that Anthropic agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion a month through May 2029 for compute capacity across SpaceX's AI training clusters, Colossus and Colossus II. Either company can terminate the agreements with 90 days' notice, and fees will be reduced during the May and June capacity ramp-up.
Anthropic Deal Could Lift AI Segment
SpaceX said in the filing that it expects more agreements to sell AI compute to outside customers. "We expect to enter into additional similar services contracts," the company said, adding, "We have sufficient capacity to provide compute for our own AI models, including support of our training and inference demands, and to satisfy the obligations under these agreements."
Reuters reported that the Anthropic deal could boost SpaceX's AI segment, which remains unprofitable. The unit lost about $2.5 billion from operations in the March quarter on revenue of $818 million, the IPO filing showed.
Orbital Data Centers Shape AI Strategy
The strategy also fits Musk's push for orbital data centers. Earlier this year, SpaceX sought FCC approval to launch up to 1 million solar-powered AI data-center satellites, a plan aimed at easing constraints around electricity, cooling and land. The company has also discussed the idea with major technology companies, including Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Google.
Musk said last week that "space is the only way" to meet AI's growing power needs. SpaceX's own filing, however, has warned that orbital data centers may never become commercially viable. In an interview with Forbes on Tuesday, Musk said that datacenters in space were "much easier" than people might think, adding that SpaceX already had over 10,000 satellites in orbit. "In the future with Starship, we'll be launching over 10,000 per year," Musk said, touting enhanced capabilities compared to current iterations of the satellites.
Photo: Frederic Legrand – COMEO from Shutterstock
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