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Three months ago, Elon Musk wrote on X that Anthropic was \u201cevil,\u201d \u201cmisanthropic,\u201d and that the AI lab hated Western civilization. On Wednesday, he leased Anthropic one of his most valuable assets: the world\u2019s biggest supercomputer.<\/p>\n
But Anthropic-lovers shouldn\u2019t bask too long in Musk\u2019s newfound praise (even if he did decide that \u201cnobody set off my evil detector\u201d ). The deal has little to do with them as a company, analysts told Fortune, and everything to do with an upcoming prospectus.\u00a0<\/p>\n
SpaceX is expected to begin its public roadshow next month, with a confidential S-1 filed April 1 targeting a valuation between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion. Wednesday\u2019s announcement\u2014paired with Musk\u2019s dissolution of his AI company xAI into SpaceX (to make SpaceXAi)\u2014gives the IPO something it didn\u2019t have a week ago: a marquee AI customer for a credible cloud-infrastructure business.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to estimates from Antoine Chkaiban, an analyst at New Street Research, the Anthropic deal will generate $3 billion to $4 billion in annual revenue for SpaceX, with more than $2.5 billion in cash profit. The margins seem extreme, but that\u2019s because the data center is already built: the fixed capital expense is sunk, and the only meaningful operating cost is electricity plus the relatively minimal costs of staffing the place.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not going to want multiple billions of dollars of GPUs sitting idle,\u201d Chkaiban told Fortune. \u201cIt\u2019s a very good business decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, it seems, the start of Elon Musk\u2019s transition from seeking to be a frontrunner in the model race, to being the landlord of AI.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe who controls the data center, really does control the application of artificial intelligence right now,\u201d\u00a0 Andrew Moore, the former head of Google Cloud AI and now CEO of defense AI startup Lovelace AI, told Fortune. \u201cSo, yeah, I think both sides of this wedding of convenience will be a little stressed out by it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hyperscaler pivot<\/p>\n
Colossus 1 contains roughly 220,000 Nvidia GPUs and was built in 2024 to train Grok, Musk\u2019s AI assistant. But Grok hasn\u2019t filled it. Chkaiban estimates Grok generates less than $1 billion in annualized revenue; Anthropic is on track for more than $40 billion. The disparity is the deal. Musk has too much compute and Grok\u2013despite endless \u201cask Grok\u201d inquiries on X\u2013can\u2019t fill it; Anthropic has too many users and not enough compute. Leasing Colossus 1 to Anthropic funds the gap.<\/p>\n
But it also lets Musk skip a step. The biggest cost line for any of the frontier AI labs is the 30%-plus margin paid to AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud for compute. SpaceX captures those margins of the hyperscalers instead of paying it in stressful debt deals, like the AI labs.<\/p>\n
That framing\u2014SpaceX as the fourth hyperscaler\u2014is what Musk needs investors to accept before pricing, analysts told Fortune. A SpaceX that can compete with AWS is worth a hyperscaler multiple, not a rocket company multiple. These days, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon trade at roughly twice the forward earnings multiple of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.<\/p>\n
But Moore was skeptical that the pivot is easy. Big enterprise customers like governments, or Fortune 500 companies pick where to store data centers mostly based on location; if the cost of energy is cheap, if they have failsafes if something goes wrong. Building one massive data center in Memphis doesn\u2019t replicate AWS\u2019s global and legal footprint. \u201cThe battle is not just who\u2019s got the most compute servers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would never bet against Elon doing something amazing,\u201d Moore added, \u201cbut he\u2019s got his work cut out to really take on AWS.\u201d<\/p>\n
The kill-switch clause<\/p>\n
Whether or not Musk wins that battle, he already has something other compute providers don\u2019t. In a reply on X, he wrote that SpaceX \u201creserves the right to reclaim the compute\u201d if Anthropic\u2019s AI \u201cengages in actions that harm humanity.\u201d The clause was not in the formal press release, and it\u2019s unclear whether it appears in the contract. But if enforceable, it gives Musk a powerful leash on one of the three leading AI labs in existence, while he sues OpenAI\u2019s leadership in federal court.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a lot of power Musk has now that he didn\u2019t two weeks ago. And it would matter less if Musk didn\u2019t change his mind so much on AI.<\/p>\n
Moore, who was dean of computer science at Carnegie Mellon during Musk\u2019s loudest existential-risk phase, remembers him as \u201cone of the loud voices saying that artificial intelligence is an existential threat for the human race.\u201d Now he says AI will usher in a world of abundance.<\/p>\n
Anthropic almost certainly has fallback plans. Frontier AI labs are not in the habit of single-sourcing the data center their entire product depends on, and Moore said the company will be working aggressively on compute efficiency in the background. \u201cThey will have contingency plans in three months, six months, twelve months,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Still, neither side gets to walk away clean. Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, put the odds the deal still exists in two years at 80%. The other 20% is a bet on Musk himself. \u201cWhat makes it unique is Elon\u2019s history,\u201d Munster said. \u201cHe can change his mind. It\u2019s less about the actual provision; it\u2019s more just about who\u2019s running the provision.\u201d<\/p>\n
The deal\u2019s odds aren\u2019t in question. Even if Munster is right and the contract holds for two years, one of three frontier AI labs in the world now operates on infrastructure controlled by the CEO of a competitor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe stakes are enormous,\u201d Moore said. \u201cEveryone is trying to get through the next six months. They\u2019ll do whatever it takes.\u201d<\/p>\n
#Elon #Musk #called #Anthropic #evil #months #hes #billion #landlord<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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