Recently, the AI company Anthropic has signed a groundbreaking computing power procurement agreement with xAI, Elon Musk's company, securing all 300 megawatts of computing power output from the Colossus1 data center near Memphis, Tennessee. This move marks a new trend in the utilization of infrastructure resources within the AI industry.

According to the agreement, Anthropic will pay xAI up to $1.25 billion per month, and the contract will be valid from now until May 2029. To ease initial costs, Anthropic will enjoy a discounted price for the first two months. This deal is expected to generate over $40 billion in revenue for xAI, further solidifying its position in the market.

This information comes from SpaceX's IPO prospectus filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which states that this arrangement will help xAI "monetize" its unused computing power. The contract terms also allow for flexible adjustments, enabling either party to terminate the agreement with 90 days' notice to adapt to market changes.

More notably, SpaceX stated that it may sign more similar service contracts in the future, implying that this business model could be expanded to a broader range of areas. This emerging model is called "neocloud," whose core idea is that when a company's computing power demand is insufficient, AI companies can act as "cloud service providers" by renting out excess computing power, thus reducing the pressure of infrastructure investment.

Although this model shows great potential, industry insiders have also noted that xAI's phased "overbuilding" of computing capacity indicates that it needs to boost asset utilization and revenue transparency at this critical moment before its upcoming public listing. Additionally, the user count for xAI's flagship AI assistant Grok has recently dropped significantly, resulting in a large number of idle servers, allowing the company to sell these resources to competitors such as Anthropic.

In summary, this long-term computing power leasing transaction not only secures key resources for Anthropic in the coming years but also provides xAI and SpaceX with a new approach to drive growth through "selling computing power." For the entire industry, this case has become a model of how major model companies can balance between self-use and external services.

Key Points:

🔹 Anthropic's computing power leasing agreement with xAI totals over $40 billion and will last until 2029.

🔹 The agreement allows either party to terminate it with 90 days' notice, providing flexibility in response to market changes.