Musk Says SpaceX Would Happily Take Anthropic’s Compute Back

Elon Musk says SpaceX would be happy to reclaim the computing capacity it supplies to Anthropic, responding to a discussion of the report that the Claude maker will not extend its compute contract beyond mid-2027.

“We would be happy to take the compute back. No problem. But I think the opposite is going to happen,” Musk wrote Wednesday.

His reply was directed at Aaron Burnett, who argued that people were reading too much into secondhand meeting notes. Burnett suggested the reported Anthropic comment was an answer to a hypothetical question about what would happen if AI demand weakened and the company was stuck paying above-market rates for compute.

That was Burnett’s interpretation. The exchange does not establish what question Anthropic was asked, and Musk was not replying to an announcement from Anthropic.

The original report came from notes shared by Jukan, who attributed them to an Anthropic meeting with sell-side analysts. Those reported remarks have not been independently verified. Musk’s response adds his view of the situation without confirming that Anthropic has given notice to end the agreement.

There is already an exit mechanism in the contract. Anthropic’s IPO filing disclosed up to $120.5 billion in SpaceX compute spending through 2029, with payments of roughly $3.1 billion a month once all contracted capacity is delivered. The initial non-cancelable periods end in January and March 2027, after which either side can terminate with 90 days’ written notice.

SpaceX has also described its compute contracts as having early exits so it can reclaim capacity for its own Grok models. That gives Musk’s willingness to take the hardware capacity back some practical context: the GPUs could serve SpaceX’s own AI business.

In his reply to Burnett’s post, Musk did not specify whether “the opposite” meant an extension, more capacity, or stronger demand. He has previously acknowledged the other side of the risk, warning that plentiful, cheap compute could reduce SpaceX revenue.

For now, the new development is Musk’s confidence that SpaceX can use the capacity, alongside his expectation that it will not need to take it back.

Do you think Anthropic will keep renting SpaceX’s compute, or move that spending elsewhere?