A securities filing has revealed one of the largest infrastructure agreements in the history of artificial intelligence. Anthropic has agreed to pay xAI, the artificial intelligence firm founded by Elon Musk, US $1.25 billion per month to lease computing infrastructure. The arrangement runs through May 2029, bringing the total value of the contract to more than US $40 billion.
Details of the multi-billion-dollar deal emerged not from the companies themselves, but within the initial public offering (IPO) prospectus filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by SpaceX. The aerospace manufacturer acquired xAI in an all-stock transaction, absorbing the unit into its new SpaceX AI division.
The contract grants Anthropic full access to the 300-megawatt capacity of the Colossus 1 data center located near Memphis, Tennessee. The facility houses more than 220,000 Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs). The agreement also guarantees Anthropic capacity rights in the upcoming Colossus 2 expansion, which plans to scale up Nvidia GB200 hardware. To ease the technical transition, Anthropic will receive a discounted rate during the first two months while the data center completes its infrastructure ramp-up.
The financial disclosures within the filing highlight why both competitors agreed to the partnership. xAI experienced significant financial strain last year, reporting an operating loss of US $6.4 billion on US $3.2 billion in revenue. At the same time, user engagement for its flagship AI assistant, Grok, declined. This drop left xAI with expensive, idle hardware. By renting the cluster to Anthropic, xAI converts its excess capacity into immediate recurring revenue ahead of the SpaceX public market debut.
Anthropic faced the opposite problem. Surging demand for its Claude platform, particularly the premium Claude Pro, Claude Max, and Claude Code tools, triggered capacity shortages and slowed user service during peak hours. Rather than spending years and billions of dollars building physical data centers from scratch, Anthropic chose to lease immediate power from a direct competitor.
The contract contains a flexible exit clause that allows either party to terminate the agreement with 90 days’ notice. If the partnership holds, the companies have discussed longer-term projects, including the development of orbital AI computing satellites by 2028 to bypass ground-based electrical power and cooling constraints.