Should Anthropic feel comfortable placing its trust in Elon Musk to host its models? After users on X speculated that Musk might one day abruptly remove the AI lab from SpaceX's servers to cripple a competitor, Musk responded with warm praise for the company, insisting such a move was “not my style.”

“I was clearly wrong about Anthropic,” Musk wrote on Thursday, referencing his September 2025 post on X where he claimed, “Winning was never in the set of possible outcomes for Anthropic.” Of course, even back then, Anthropic was already a success story, reportedly holding the largest share of the enterprise AI market. It seems Musk's earlier antagonism toward Anthropic is now a thing of the past—and not just on social media. As of July 2026, Anthropic has become one of SpaceX's biggest customers. Here's a quick recap: In May, Anthropic signed a deal to purchase 300 megawatts of computing power, which represents the entire output of xAI’s Colossus 1 data center near Memphis, Tennessee. (Musk’s xAI merged with SpaceX in February.) Under the agreement, Anthropic will pay $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, generating roughly $40 billion in revenue for SpaceX’s xAI unit. For context, Google also signed a deal to lease SpaceX infrastructure through June 2029, paying $920 million per month.

Musk insists that Anthropic’s decision to partner with him isn't risky, and he claims to hold the rival in high regard. “They are obviously currently the leader in AI. No company has released a model as good as Mythos/Fable and they will undoubtedly have Mythos 2 ready soon. And I would never cut them off in a way that hurt them badly, even as a competitor. That’s not my style,” he wrote. As evidence of his refusal to squeeze competitors, Musk pointed to Tesla’s 2014 decision—outlined in a now-deleted company blog post but preserved under its patent pledge—not to initiate patent lawsuits against anyone using its technology in good faith. He also noted that Tesla opened its Supercharger network and charging port design to rivals. “SpaceX launches competing satellite systems with no increase in price or use of unfair terms. Even my worst enemies can attack me on this platform,” he added, citing another example.

Of course, Musk hasn't always shied away from tactics aimed at competitors, particularly those with a shared history. He sued OpenAI, for instance. Still, Anthropic doesn't have to rely solely on Musk’s adherence to his personal code. If he were to suddenly shut down Anthropic’s infrastructure, there would undoubtedly be contractual consequences. Moreover, SpaceX has massive incentives to keep the deal intact. Not only does Anthropic pay handsomely, but SpaceX engineers could gain valuable experience building for and supporting Anthropic’s rapidly expanding AI operations—much like Amazon’s engineers do. This proximity might also bring other advantages. During his trial against OpenAI, Musk acknowledged that “distilling” is a real practice in AI, where one model maker uses fake accounts to send prompts to a competitor and learn how it works. As the New York Times reported, when a lawyer asked if xAI had ever distilled technology from OpenAI, Musk replied: “Generally AI companies distill other AI companies.”

In February, Anthropic accused three Chinese model makers of doing this to Claude. Presumably, Anthropic and Google believe they have safeguards in place to prevent SpaceX from engaging in similar activities while using its infrastructure. However, hosting Anthropic’s compute could still give SpaceX greater visibility into the company’s operations than most competitors would ever have. For now, this partnership seems to offer nothing but upside for Musk’s company. As for tomorrow, and as the three-year contract ages, the future remains uncertain.