Elon Musk pictured at SpaceX in Brownsville, Texas.
Marvin Joseph The Washington Post | Getty Images
SpaceX filed for an IPO last week, and Elon Musk is already causing a stir.
Days before the reusable rocket maker is expected to begin pitching its pitch to investors, Musk took to social media platform X (owned by SpaceX) late Wednesday to explain the details of the company’s latest partnership with rival AI startup Anthropic. His comments included a potential deal about their deal that was not included in SpaceX’s 300-plus page IPO filing.
Earlier this month, SpaceX said it was leasing unused computing capacity at its Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee to Anthropic. Last week’s prospectus said Anthropic agreed to pay SpaceX “$1.25 billion per month through May 2029, with volume increases in May and June 2026 at a reduced rate.” The filing also noted, “The agreement may be terminated by either party upon 90 days’ notice.”
In his letter to X on Wednesday night, Musk wrote, “SpaceX has not committed to leasing Colossus for years,” and called the deal “a 180-day lease with 90 days’ notice to cancel after that.” However, the prospectus did not say anything about the deal which could expire in a few months.
Whether Anthropic is set to pay SpaceX $15 billion a year over the next three years or will spend much less in the short term is a big consideration for potential investors. SpaceX’s total revenue in 2025 was $18.7 billion, and selling computing capacity in its data center adds a completely new revenue stream, while positioning SpaceX. in competition with so-called neocloud providers like Nebius again CoreWeave.
Some investors are already eager to buy into the largest IPO on record, and back the company valued at over $1 trillion while burning billions of dollars per quarter. Musk’s post raises further questions about the company’s financial disclosures.
“The irony is that Musk is right and the S-1 is materially misleading, or the S-1 is right and Elon is at its best,” Eric Talley, a professor at Columbia Law School and an expert on corporate governance, said in an email. “But more than that it’s confusing for investors who are trying (as best they can) to put a value on SpaceX.”
Anthropic declined to comment for this story, and representatives for SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
Anthropic’s disclosure isn’t the only SpaceX filing that analysts have highlighted as less than thorough.
Franco Granda, an analyst at PitchBook, wrote a number of omissions in a report following the publication of the prospectus.
“Serious revelations do not exist,” Granda wrote. He cited the “subscriber churn” and “unit economics” of the Falcon 9, SpaceX’s partially reusable rocket, and the “granularity of the AI component,” writing that the company did not release Grok or iX subscriptions or provide details of the “usage level at 1.0 GW of deployed computing.”
The Economics of AI
SpaceX’s AI segment is particularly challenging for investors to value.
Musk founded xAI in 2023 to try to take on OpenAI in the growing generative AI market. Although xAI remains a niche player in the market, Musk valued the business at $250 billion in February, when it merged with SpaceX in a deal that gave the combined company a total of $1.25 trillion.
In the first quarter of this year, SpaceX’s capital expenditure reached $10.1 billion, more than double that of the previous year, with $7.7 billion of that included in xAI, according to the prospectus. The AI unit, now known as SpaceXAI, recorded an operating loss of $2.5 billion in the quarter.
In choosing to lease its computing capacity to Anthropic, SpaceX was admitting that its AI models and services did not stimulate high demand, and that the company was not in a position to use its expensive infrastructure.
Musk said in his post on X Wednesday night that SpaceX wants to be able to terminate the deal if it needs capacity.
“We won’t leave them hanging and will provide the appropriate solution,” Musk wrote, referring to Anthropic. “But if the computer gets too powerful I said we might need it at some point.”
Cathie Wood of Ark Invest, a SpaceX bull, praised Musk’s move to monetize the computing infrastructure, which cost xAI billions of dollars to build.
“Thanks to its partnership with Anthropic, XAI, now SpaceXAI, goes from a big loss in Colossus to a big profit as a neocloud,” Wood wrote after the deal was announced on May 9. He estimated at the time that the move would bring in $5 billion to $6 billion a year.
That was before the IPO filing put out a much bigger number, and just before Musk stepped in this week, effectively admitting the prospectus was flawed.
Ann Lipton, a law professor at the University of Colorado, said that, since SpaceX is amending its S-1 before the offering, it should “tweet an explanation.” He said in an email that Musk’s post appeared to contradict the post, but that the discrepancy could be “fixed.”
“This is usually handled by filing a separate review with the SEC,” he wrote.
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