Anthropic Taps SpaceX Data Centres to Expand Claude AI Capacity

Anthropic on May 6 announced a deal with SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk to expand computing capacity for Claude by using SpaceX’s data centres originally built to power xAI’s Grok model.

According to the Business Insider, the agreement enables access to SpaceX’s Colossus 1 facility in Memphis, Tennessee, which has over 220,000 Nvidia processors and promises to supply 300 megawatts of new capacity to Anthropic within a month.

This could help Anthropic deal with computing shortages caused by a surge in demand for products like its artificial intelligence (AI) coding tool, Claude Code. While the exact details of the deal have not been disclosed, Anthropic has said it wants to work with SpaceX to build large computing capacity through space-based data centres.

The deal could also mark the beginning of a new relationship between Anthropic’s leadership and Elon Musk, who has criticised the company in the past. “Frankly, I don’t think there is anything you can do to escape the inevitable irony of Anthropic ending up being misanthropic,” Musk had earlier written in a post on X.

In a sudden turn from his previous statements, Musk told Reuters on March 6 he decided to lease computing power after spending time with Anthropic leaders last week and was impressed by their efforts to ensure Anthropic’s Claude is “good ⁠for humanity.”

“Everyone I met was highly competent and cared a great deal about doing the right thing. No one set off my evil detector,” Musk wrote in a post on X on May 6. He is currently engaged in a legal battle with OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman for allegedly breaching its mission to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of humanity.

However, Musk also warned that he would remove Anthropic or other cloud clients out of xAI’s data centres “if their AI engages in actions that harm humanity”.

Why Anthropic Needs SpaceX

The partnership is being developed to enable Anthropic to expand computing capacity for its premium AI offerings, including subscribers to Claude Pro and Claude Max, as demand for advanced AI infrastructure continues to surge globally.

Anthropic will use the additional compute power to improve performance and service availability for its AI products.

The agreement comes at a time when AI firms are competing to secure large-scale computing resources capable of supporting increasingly sophisticated models and workloads.

Scaling Claude AI Infrastructure

Buoyed by the extra capacity from the SpaceX deal and other similar recent agreements, Anthropic said it was doubling Claude Code’s rate limits for its paid plans, removing peak-hour usage caps for Pro and Max accounts and sharply increasing the volume of requests developers ​can make to its Claude Opus models.

The ‌company said it is also interested in working with SpaceX to develop multiple gigawatts of space-based orbital data centres: one of Musk’s key goals and a major driver behind SpaceX’s initial public offering, as the endeavour is expected to be highly capital-intensive and technically challenging.