Samyukta Lakshmi | Bloomberg | Getty Images
As part of the agreement, Anthropic will get access to more than 300 megawatts of compute capacity, and it also “expressed interest” in working with SpaceX to develop multiple gigawatts of compute capacity in space.
The deal lands after Musk, who runs a competing AI company called xAI (now owned by SpaceX) has emerged as a vocal critic of Anthropic, largely because of the company’s spat with the U.S. government in recent months. Musk has posted on X that Anthropic is “doomed to become the opposite of its name,” which would be misanthropic, and has asked if there’s a “more hypocritical company than Anthropic.”
“Anthropic hates Western Civilization,” Musk wrote in a post on X in February.
XAI has been building out its data infrastructure, primarily around Memphis, as it races to compete in the booming AI market against OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. Colossus 1 is its largest facility to-date.
When building and running Colossus, xAI and its subsidiary MZX Tech, LLC, installed and operated dozens of natural gas-burning turbines to power the facility, claiming that no federal permit was required to do so because they were only for temporary use. The turbines reportedly worsened air pollution problems around Memphis, and led to persistent protests against xAI’s work in the region.
–CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report
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