Elon Musk praises Anthropic but trust remains an issue

Elon Musk’s public praise for Anthropic on X, calling them ‘clearly the leader in AI,’ comes as the AI lab becomes one of SpaceX’s largest customers. Anthropic signed a $40 billion deal to rent SpaceX’s Colossus 1 data center through 2029, paying $1.25 billion monthly. Users raised concerns that Musk could pull the plug on a rival, but Musk insists that’s ‘not my style,’ citing Tesla’s open patent pledge and Supercharger sharing. Still, Musk has sued rivals like OpenAI before. Anthropic likely has strong contractual protections, and SpaceX benefits massively from the deal—both financially and technically, as engineers learn to support Anthropic’s fast-growing AI systems. Why it matters: This deal illustrates the tangled web where AI competitors become interdependent partners, forcing labs to weigh strategic benefits against potential conflicts of interest.