The Numbers
SpaceX's IPO filing discloses an agreement under which Anthropic pays $1.25 billion a month through May 2029 for 300MW of data centre capacity. Across 36 months that is approximately $45 billion, or $15 billion a year.
The space is xAI's. Specifically the Colossus and Colossus 2 facilities in Memphis, Tennessee.
Google has a separate arrangement at roughly $920 million a month, reported in June. A Cursor agreement appears in the filing with no financial terms attached.
The Clause Worth Reading Twice
Either party may terminate on 90 days notice.
That sits awkwardly beside something in Anthropic's own prospectus. Anthropic disclosed roughly $518 billion in compute and infrastructure obligations over a decade, and described about 80% of that as non-cancelable.
Two filings, two companies, describing the same money from opposite ends - and a $45 billion line with a three-month exit on it. We do not know which bucket Anthropic counted this in, and neither filing says. It is a reasonable question for anyone modelling either company, and nobody has answered it.
1GW, or 330MW
SpaceX has publicly claimed a 1GW "nameplate compute draw" as of March 2026. That number has been repeated across coverage of the company's AI ambitions for months.
The IPO document states that the figure "does not represent actual power consumption or utilization", and references 330MW of operational compute: 130MW at Colossus and 210MW at Colossus 2.
That is a 3x gap between the marketing number and the disclosed one, and SpaceX disclosed it itself. Prospectuses are where this happens, because the liability for an inaccurate one is real in a way that the liability for a press release is not.
What xAI Looks Like Underneath
xAI lost $2.4 billion in Q1 2026 and spent $7.7 billion on AI infrastructure in the same quarter. SpaceX separately plans $2.8 billion in gas turbine purchases - the Memphis power story in one line.
So the structure, stated plainly: Anthropic and Google are paying a combined $2.17 billion a month to rent capacity in facilities built by a competitor, and that revenue is now load-bearing in a third company's public listing.
Why This Matters If You Are Not an Investor
Because it tells you what compute actually costs at the frontier, and the number is not subtle. $15 billion a year buys Anthropic 300MW. That is the floor under every per-token price you have seen this year, and it explains why three labs converged on $2 and $10 per million within 48 hours of each other rather than competing downward.
It also means the compute supply chain is now a small number of mutually dependent companies. Anthropic's capacity sits in xAI's buildings, brokered through SpaceX, and Google rents from the same place. A disruption at one address is a disruption for most of the industry.
FAQ
How much does Anthropic pay SpaceX?
$1.25 billion a month through May 2029, for 300MW of data centre space - approximately $45 billion in total, disclosed in SpaceX's IPO filing.
Whose data centres are these?
xAI's Colossus and Colossus 2 facilities in Memphis, Tennessee. Anthropic is renting capacity inside a competitor's buildings.
Can the deal be cancelled?
Yes. The filing states either party may terminate with 90 days notice.
Does SpaceX really have 1GW of compute?
The filing says the 1GW "nameplate compute draw" figure "does not represent actual power consumption or utilization", and references 330MW of operational capacity - 130MW at Colossus and 210MW at Colossus 2.