Reports from the past few weeks indicate that xAI has entered into new partnerships with Anthropic and Google, establishing a framework to provide both companies with large-scale computing resources.
In terms of background, xAI merged with SpaceX in February of this year, and the revenue from these deals is expected to flow into the entity currently preparing for an IPO. While some market observers point to this as a financial maneuver ahead of the SpaceX IPO, others suggest the reality is more complex.
Anthropic had previously been facing a severe shortage of computing power. Access restrictions to its services had been occurring during peak demand periods, such as European afternoons and North American mornings.
Consequently, Anthropic had introduced restrictions for subscription users, varying the rate of quota consumption between peak and off-peak times. However, with rapid growth in demand, there were limits to how much allocation could be adjusted for users.
In early May of this year, xAI signed an agreement to provide Anthropic with access to the Colossus 1 data center in Memphis. This allowed Anthropic to roll back some of its usage restrictions and eased the pressure during peak times.
The fee for this contract reaches $1.25 billion per month, covering a capacity of 300MW, which is equivalent to approximately 220,000 GPUs.
Last week, Google announced a similar partnership. This agreement is valued at $920 million per month and covers 110,000 GPUs. Both contracts include clauses allowing for termination with 90 days' notice following an initial lock-in period.
By simple calculation, these are extremely profitable deals for xAI. Even without accounting for operating costs and depreciation, if the contracts continue for 18 months, the company would recover its initial capital expenditure (CAPEX) while still having several hundred MW of GPU capacity remaining.
However, there are concerns regarding the contracts. It has been pointed out that the legal battle between Elon Musk and OpenAI, as well as Google's involvement as a major SpaceX shareholder in the IPO valuation, may be influencing these deals.
On the other hand, GPUs are currently in extreme shortage. While delays in data center construction are an industry-wide challenge, SpaceX/xAI possesses the execution power to build Colossus 1 in just 122 days. This capability serves as a significant competitive advantage for the company.
Source: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab（HN 692pt・552コメント） (HN Search (backfill), 2026-06-09)