SpaceX IPO Filing Reveals Anthropic Is Paying $15 Billion a Year to Access Its Data Centers
Anthropic agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month until May 2029 for access to cloud computing infrastructure, a highly anticipated US regulatory filing revealed on Wednesday. In other words, Anthropic will send a rival AI lab about $15 billion a year, an extraordinary sum that demonstrates how access to computing has become one of the defining bottlenecks in the race to develop advanced artificial intelligence.
Anthropic and SpaceX announced a deal earlier this month that gives developer Claude access to GPUs at Colossus and Colossus II, two data centers straddling Tennessee and Mississippi with more than a gigawatt of computing power. SpaceX had been racing to build out the facilities for its xAI unit, which is developing the Grok AI chatbot, but Musk said his company ultimately didn’t need its full computing capacity. Terms of the deal were not previously disclosed.
Anthropic is paying unspecified reduced fees for May and June before the $1.25 billion monthly fee takes effect, SpaceX said in its S-1 regulatory filing.
This eye-popping figure shows how hungry Anthropic is for the computing resources needed to power products like its increasingly popular AI coding tools. The company’s revenue for the second quarter of 2026 is expected to exceed $10 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.
An Anthropic spokesperson confirmed the figures to WIRED. SpaceX did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
SpaceX says it plans to “enter into additional similar service agreements” for its IT infrastructure and will continue to use its data centers for itself. “We have sufficient capacity to provide calculations for our own AI models, including supporting our training and inference requests, and to satisfy obligations under these agreements,” the filing said. “We believe our dual monetization strategy provides multiple pathways to generate returns on invested capital. »
The filing details SpaceX’s business opportunities and risks ahead of an IPO. SpaceX is pursuing the largest IPO in history, hoping to raise about $75 billion at a valuation of $1.75 trillion. The company filed its initial documents confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on April 1, giving it time to make changes based on feedback from the regulator. The filing released Wednesday is the cleaned version, although additional changes could come before its listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the symbol SPCX, which could come as early as June 12.
SpaceX, including X and xAI, generated nearly $4.7 billion in revenue and lost nearly $4.3 billion in the first quarter of this year, according to the filing. Last year, SpaceX generated $18.7 billion in revenue but lost $4.9 billion after heavy spending to develop AI technologies and a larger rocket, according to the filing.
The S-1 is intended to help potential investors better understand the company and the challenges it faces. A widely held concern is how much power Elon Musk holds over SpaceX and whether there are enough safeguards to control the co-founder and CEO.
Excerpts from the IPO filing seen by Reuters before its release showed that the only person who can fire Musk is the billionaire himself. The documents also reveal that he will be able to retain control of the company’s board of directors. Additionally, he and his allies will have outsized voting power, allowing them to fend off attempts by activist shareholders to derail the company’s efforts. SpaceX also plans to apply provisions of Texas law to fend off hostile takeovers and the removal of executives or board members.
