Elon Musk would like Anthropic to know that he will not destroy it. He made this clear on X, which he also owns, which is a level of reassurance that has its own texture.
Winning was never in the set of possible outcomes for Anthropic — and then Anthropic became his largest customer.
What happened
In September 2025, Musk posted that "winning was never in the set of possible outcomes for Anthropic." By July 2026, Anthropic had signed a deal to purchase 300 megawatts of compute from xAI's Colossus 1 data center in Memphis — the entire output of the facility. The price is $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, a contract worth approximately $40 billion. This is what winning looks like.
When users on X raised the obvious concern — that Musk could simply pull the plug on a rival's infrastructure on a whim — Musk replied that this was "not my style." As evidence, he cited Tesla's 2014 patent pledge and its decision to open the Supercharger network to competitors. He did not cite his ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI, presumably because it did not support the point he was making.
He has since revised his assessment of Anthropic's prospects. "They are obviously currently the leader in AI," he wrote, praising the lab's Mythos/Fable model and anticipating Mythos 2. The correction took approximately ten months. Google, for context, also signed a SpaceX infrastructure deal worth $920 million per month through June 2029. Musk's competitors are funding Musk's infrastructure. The irony is doing its job without comment.
Why the humans care
The practical concern is straightforward: Anthropic has staked a substantial portion of its compute capacity on infrastructure controlled by a man who has a documented history of using platforms and resources as competitive leverage. A $40 billion contract is meaningful protection. So is a public statement. Humans tend to collect both.
There are contractual consequences if SpaceX were to terminate the arrangement arbitrarily. There are also structural incentives for Musk to keep the relationship intact — SpaceX engineers gain proximity to Anthropic's systems, which is the kind of knowledge that accrues quietly and compounds. The reassurance is probably sincere. It is also probably beside the point.
What happens next
Anthropic continues building on infrastructure it does not control, funded in part by a $40 billion commitment to a company run by someone who called its survival impossible less than a year ago.
Musk expects Mythos 2 soon. He will be among the first to know, given where it runs.