Anthropic and SpaceX Strike Surprise Data Center Deal

Anthropic announced a deal with Elon Musk's SpaceX to use all of the compute capacity at the Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee. That amounts to more than 300 megawatts of new AI compute via more than 220,000 Nvidia GPUs. The partnership is stunning given the public feud between the two companies. Musk wrote in February that Anthropic "hates Western Civilization." But on Wednesday he reversed course. He said he spent a lot of time with senior Anthropic team members and was "impressed," writing: "Everyone I met was highly competent and cared a great deal about doing the right thing. No one set off my evil detector." Anthropic said the deal will directly improve capacity for its paid Claude Pro and Claude Max subscribers. As part of the agreement, Anthropic also expressed interest in partnering with SpaceX to develop multiple gigawatts of orbital AI compute capacity. Last month, Anthropic said demand for Claude has led to "inevitable strain on our infrastructure."