Musk praises Anthropic, pledges not to cut off SpaceX infrastructure access
Original: Elon Musk praises Mythos/Fable, promises not to ‘cut off’ Anthropic
Why This Matters
The $40B Anthropic-SpaceX compute deal marks a major consolidation of AI infrastructure under Musk's umbrella.
Elon Musk publicly praised Anthropic on X on July 9, 2026, calling it "the current leader in AI" and promising he would never disrupt the company's access to SpaceX/xAI infrastructure, despite being a competitor. Anthropic pays $1.25B/month for 300MW of compute through May 2029.
On July 9, 2026, Elon Musk responded to X users who questioned whether Anthropic was taking a risk by relying on SpaceX servers run by a rival. Musk wrote: "I was clearly wrong about Anthropic," walking back a September 2025 post in which he predicted the company could never win. He praised Anthropic's Mythos/Fable model as the best currently available and anticipated Mythos 2 would arrive soon. "I would never cut them off in a way that hurt them badly, even as a competitor. That's not my style," he wrote.
The context: Anthropic signed a deal in May 2026 to purchase 300 megawatts of compute — the entire output of xAI's Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee — for $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, totaling roughly $40 billion. Google also signed a separate SpaceX infrastructure deal at $920 million per month through June 2029. xAI merged with SpaceX in February 2026.
Musk cited Tesla's 2014 patent pledge and its open Supercharger network as evidence of his non-aggressive competitive style. Anthropic also has contractual protections and SpaceX has strong financial incentives to maintain the relationship.