Elon Musk answered the report the way he answers most reports: on X, in a single post, on Wednesday. “We would be happy to take the compute back,” he wrote. “No problem. But I think the opposite is going to happen.”
The report was that Anthropic executives had told a group of sell-side analysts that the company does not intend to extend its computing agreement with SpaceX beyond the middle of 2027. Under the contract, Anthropic pays SpaceX $3.1 billion a month beginning in December, and total commitments run to as much as $120.5 billion through 2029.
In Anthropic’s registration statement, that arrangement is the second-largest compute contract disclosed, behind a $161.2 billion equipment lease with Broadcom. It is also described as terminable: either party can walk away on 90 days’ notice once the initial noncancelable period expires in early 2027.
When the deal was announced in May, it looked different. SpaceX disclosed payments of $1.25 billion a month through May 2029 and described the arrangement as an initial 180-day lease, a structure that let it reclaim capacity if its own models needed the racks. Anthropic expanded from SpaceX’s Colossus 1 facility into Colossus 2 within weeks.
For SpaceX, the money is large relative to everything else it does. The Anthropic contract accounted for close to a third of SpaceX revenue in the third quarter, a share that would be strange for a rocket company and unremarkable for a landlord.
SpaceX has been building like a landlord. The company has said it expects to finish 2026 with 2.5 to 3 gigawatts of computing capacity and to add roughly 13 gigawatts during 2027. Capacity of that size has to be sold, or written down.
There is other demand. SpaceX has an agreement to supply Google with capacity worth about $920 million a month, covering 110,000 Nvidia processors along with networking and memory. Google competes with Anthropic in models and buys from both companies in compute.
For Anthropic, the arithmetic runs the other way. The company disclosed $895.4 billion in commitments, most of it for computing, with $447.5 billion falling due before 2031 and $69.8 billion within twelve months of Sept. 30. Third-quarter revenue rose 47% sequentially to $16.96 billion. A contract that costs $37 billion a year needs revenue that grows faster than the bill.
Anthropic’s reason for leaving early is not hard to infer. Capacity is scarce now, and scarcity has a price. If the market tightens further, a landlord with a 90-day exit and a waiting list has an obvious move: end the lease and reprice the racks. Announcing that you will not renew is one way to take that option away from the other side.
Musk’s reply suggests he sees the same option from the other end. His confidence is a statement about demand rather than about Anthropic: that somebody else will pay more for the same megawatts in 2027, and that the waiting list is real.
SpaceX’s own filing leaves the door open. The company said it expects to enter into additional similar services contracts and that it has enough capacity to serve its own models while meeting the obligations it has already signed. A business that describes its leases as terminable and its pipeline as growing is telling investors it plans to sell the same racks twice.
Both companies are selling a version of that story to public investors. SpaceX listed in June. Anthropic prices its own offering on Nov. 18. Each is asking the market to believe its capacity will be full and its prices firm for years, at the moment the two of them are telling each other the arrangement may not last.
That is the awkward part of a compute contract in a shortage. The buyer wants a guarantee and an exit. The seller wants a term and the right to reprice. A 90-day clause grants both, which is why it appears in so many of these agreements and why it says so little about what will happen.
The leases also carry an accounting question. A contract of $120.5 billion signed by a company with $895.4 billion of total commitments is a fixed cost in a business where the revenue that pays for it arrives monthly and can slow. Every month Anthropic runs below plan, the commitment looks heavier, and the case for renegotiating or exiting gets stronger.
Musk’s post did not address price, term or the notice period. It addressed the story, which is what a chief executive does when a customer’s plans have become a fact about his own valuation. SpaceX has spent the year persuading investors that demand for compute exceeds supply. A tenant announcing an exit is inconvenient evidence.
The number to watch is not the $120.5 billion headline. It is whether SpaceX signs a replacement tenant at a higher rate before the notice period runs, or whether Anthropic finds cheaper capacity and lets the lease lapse quietly in the summer of 2027.
