Anthropic · TechCrunch AI
On Wednesday, xAI and Anthropic announced a surprise partnership that has the Claude-maker buying out “all of the compute capacity
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More importantly, it immediately monetized one of the company’s most impressive accomplishments, turning xAI from a consumer to a provider of compute.
Key facts
- On Wednesday, xAI and Anthropic announced a surprise partnership that has the Claude-maker buying out “all of the compute capacity at [xAI’s] Colossus 1 data center,” roughly 300MW that allowed
- But beyond the short-term benefit, the Anthropic partnership sends an unusual message about where Elon Musk’s priorities lie
- But when forced to make a choice between selling more available compute to customers and preserving some to build their own tools, they reliably choose door No. 2 — This is especially useful as the company, now combined with SpaceX, speeds toward an IPO
Summary
On Wednesday, xAI and Anthropic announced a surprise partnership that has the Claude-maker buying out “all of the compute capacity at Colossus 1 data center,” roughly 300MW that allowed Anthropic to immediately raise its usage limits. It’s tempting to see the arrangement as a shot at OpenAI amid the ongoing lawsuit. In the short term, there’s an obvious logic at work. xAI’s existing products are mostly focused on Grok, which has seen plummeting usage since the image generation debacles earlier this year. But beyond the short-term benefit, the Anthropic partnership sends an unusual message about where Elon Musk’s priorities lie. It’s rare to see a major tech company treat compute resources this way when companies like Google and Meta, who are also training models, are building more data centers.