Anthropic could pay SpaceX up to $84.5B for computing capacity through 2029

Anthropic is preparing to spend more on rented computing power than most countries collect in taxes. A confidential IPO prospectus dated around September 29, 2026 reveals the company could pay up to $84.5 billion to Elon Musk’s xAI for NVIDIA-based compute capacity through 2029, secured through SpaceX’s Colossus 1 data center. That number is large enough to make most readers blink twice, so here is the context: $84.5 billion over roughly three years works out to an estimated $15 billion annually by May 2029, with monthly payments ramping up to approximately $1.25 billion once fully operational. What Anthropic is actually buying The partnership traces back to May 2026, when Anthropic secured exclusive access to Colossus 1, a SpaceX facility that houses more than 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs running on over 300 megawatts of power. The arrangement is notable for one particular clause: the bulk of this commitment is cancelable on just 90 days’ notice. That is an unusually short leash for a contract measured in the tens of billions, and it stands in contrast to Anthropic’s other infrastructure agreements with partners including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, which carry more binding terms. The b...