SpaceX signs $6.3B compute deal with open-source Reflection AI

Reflection AI, an open-source AI startup founded in 2024 by former Google DeepMind researchers, has secured its first major compute deal with SpaceX. The agreement is worth up to $6.3 billion, with Reflection paying $150 million per month beginning July 1, 2026 through 2029 for access to Nvidia's latest GB300 AI chips and supporting hardware at SpaceX's Colossus 2 data center near Memphis, Tennessee. Both parties have the option to terminate the contract with 90 days' notice after the first three months. The deal is smaller than SpaceX's existing agreements with Anthropic ($1.25 billion per month) and Google ($920 million per month), both also running through July 2029. Reflection AI positioned the deal as validation of its open-weight AI strategy, which publicly releases trained model parameters as an open-source alternative to closed frontier labs. A company spokesperson stated the deal demonstrates the importance of open-source AI to the ecosystem, noting that "recent events highlight how important open source is to the AI ecosystem, with more nations and enterprises recognizing the risks and costs associated with exclusively depending on closed models." The statement referenced the U.S. government's recent ban on Anthropic's closed models, Fable and Mythos. SpaceX's Colossus data center was originally built by xAI, a company founded by Elon Musk now integrated into SpaceX, for internal AI efforts. As xAI's internal pursuits have faced challenges, SpaceX has leveraged its substantial AI chip holdings by renting them to major AI research organizations.