Full May 2026 coverage: AI News May 2026.
Anthropic Signs Deal for SpaceX's Entire Colossus 1 Supercomputer
Anthropic announced on May 6 that it has signed an agreement with SpaceX to use all compute capacity at the Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee — the facility originally built for Elon Musk's Grok AI models. The deal gives Anthropic immediate access to more than 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs, including H100, H200, and next-generation GB200 accelerators, and over 300 megawatts of power.
The deal is notable for reasons beyond the raw numbers. Musk spent February calling Anthropic "misanthropic and evil." By May 6 — after spending time with Anthropic's senior leadership — he posted on X that he was "impressed" and that "no one set off my evil detector." xAI (now operating as SpaceXAI following its merger with SpaceX) has moved primary training to Colossus 2, leaving Colossus 1 available to lease. Analysts estimate the arrangement generates $3–6 billion in annual revenue for SpaceX depending on the source.
Claude Code Rate Limits Doubled Immediately
Anthropic rolled out three changes effective with the announcement:
- Claude Code five-hour rate limits doubled for Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans
- Peak hours limit reductions removed for Claude Pro and Max
- API rate limits raised considerably for Claude Opus models
This is the most direct day-one user benefit from a compute infrastructure deal Anthropic has announced. If you've been hitting Code walls during heavy sessions, those limits are now twice as wide.
The SpaceX deal joins four other major infrastructure commitments Anthropic announced this year: up to 5GW with Amazon, 5GW with Google and Broadcom, $30 billion of Azure capacity via Microsoft and NVIDIA, and a $50 billion investment in US AI infrastructure with Fluidstack.
Microsoft: 17.8% of the World's Working-Age Population Now Uses AI
Microsoft published its Q1 2026 Global AI Diffusion Report, tracking AI adoption across 26 economies. Global usage rose 1.5 percentage points in a single quarter — from 16.3% to 17.8% of the world's working-age population. The UAE leads all nations at 70.1% adoption. The US moved from 24th to 21st globally, now at 31.3%. South Korea, Thailand, and Japan showed the largest quarter-over-quarter movement, driven by improving AI model performance in Asian languages.
The report also found total US software developer employment reached approximately 2.2 million in 2025 — up 8.5% year over year and a record high — with early Q1 2026 data showing employment still running 4% above March 2025 levels. AI is the top cited reason for job cuts two months in a row, yet developer headcounts are rising. Both data points are accurate; they are describing different parts of the labor market.
Full May 2026 AI news coverage: AI News May 2026 — All Releases and Announcements