Several AI applications can be seen on a smartphone screen, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Meta AI, Grok and DeepSeek. (zu dpa: «Anthropic taps Musk data centre in surprise AI tie-up») Philip Dulian/dpa
Artificial intelligence firm Anthropic is set to gain access to computing power from a massive data centre linked to Elon Musk, in an unusual partnership between rivals in the intensifying AI race.
Anthropic said it would use the full capacity of the Colossus 1 data centre, operated by Musk’s space company SpaceX, and now integrated into his AI venture xAI.
The deal gives Anthropic access to more than 220,000 AI chips from Nvidia, a leading supplier of hardware for artificial intelligence.
Musk also said on Wednesday that xAI would be dissolved as a standalone company and that future AI products would be developed directly within SpaceX under a new structure branded SpaceXAI.
The new collaboration is notable given xAI was the developer behind the chatbot Grok, which competes directly with Anthropic’s AI software, Claude. Musk had criticized Anthropic as recently as February, calling its technology “misanthropic and evil” in a post on his platform X.
Both companies in turn compete with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, which Elon Musk co-founded in 2015 but has since fallen out with, leading to a long-running dispute.
A court case is currently under way in which Musk is seeking to oust OpenAI chief Sam Altman and overhaul the company’s structure.
But Musk struck a more conciliatory tone towards Anthropic on Wednesday. He said he spent time last week with senior members of the company’s team to better understand how they ensure Claude benefits humanity.
“I was impressed,” Musk said in an X post, adding that he agreed to lease Colossus 1 to Anthropic as xAI shifts its own development to a newer facility, Colossus 2.
SpaceX separately said that Anthropic had expressed interest in collaborating on plans to build AI data centres in space.
Musk has argued that future computing capacity constraints — particularly related to energy — could require moving large-scale processing into orbit, though analysts have questioned the economic feasibility of such projects.