Elon Musk has long claimed that SpaceX is not just a rocket company. The company is increasingly making money by leasing spare computing capacity from its Colossus data centers to other companies. And the sums involved are substantial. Contracts with Google and Anthropic could bring in roughly $26 billion a year combined, more than SpaceX generated in revenue for the entirety of last year. x
Leasing computing capacity for billions of dollars
In May this year, SpaceX agreed to provide Anthropic with access to roughly 325,000 Nvidia graphics chips across its Colossus data centers for $1.25 billion per month. xAI itself described the deal as giving Anthropic access to Colossus 1, one of the largest and fastest-built AI data centers in the world. It contains hundreds of thousands of Nvidia chips, including densely deployed H100, H200, and next-generation GB200 accelerators. According to its statement, Anthropic will use this computing power directly to increase capacity for Claude Pro and Claude Max subscribers.
A few weeks later, a second contract followed. SpaceX struck a similar deal with Google, offering it around 110,000 chips for $920 million per month. The contract with Google runs from October 2026 to June 2029 and could be worth as much as $30.4 billion if fulfilled in full. Moreover, the list of customers continues to grow. SpaceX has also signed computing capacity lease agreements with Reflection AI.
Contract with the Pentagon
Last Friday, a report emerged showing just how far this business could extend. According to the Wall Street Journal, Elon Musk is negotiating with the U.S. Department of Defense to provide it with access to billions of dollars’ worth of computing capacity for running AI models. SpaceX would not sell the data centers to the military, but would instead provide computing power for a limited period, much like a lease.
The talks are still ongoing and could fall through, while neither SpaceX nor the Pentagon has yet responded to inquiries. If the deal goes ahead, SpaceX would compete directly with established suppliers. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle already provide capacity to the Pentagon. At the end of last year, Amazon also announced that it would invest up to $50 billion through its AWS cloud division to expand AI and supercomputing capacity for U.S. government customers.
According to the WSJ, SpaceX employees have said that they want to compete directly with specialized cloud companies such as CoreWeave and offer computing power at lower prices.
Record-breaking construction of Colossus
The fact that SpaceX has anything to lease at all is thanks to Musk’s decision in 2024. At the time, xAI launched the first large Colossus cluster in just 122 days by converting an existing factory. Since then, the site near Memphis has expanded considerably. Colossus and Colossus II now occupy roughly 2 million square feet and together provide around 1 gigawatt of computing power, with plans to expand to as many as one million graphics chips.
This system works for one simple reason. Demand for artificial intelligence computing is growing faster than supply can keep up. Building a large data center typically takes years and requires enormous investment, so SpaceX’s spare capacity is currently in very high demand. This allows the company to charge a premium to customers who need computing power immediately.
Thanks to its own data centers, SpaceX has become flexible. It can lease capacity to other companies, use it to train newer versions of Grok, or redirect it for Starlink’s own needs.
Grok is falling behind
The paradox is that SpaceX’s own artificial intelligence is still losing money. The company generated $18.7 billion in revenue last year, of which $11.4 billion came from Starlink connectivity and about $4.1 billion from rocket launches and other space-related activities. The AI division added another $3.2 billion, but at the same time reported an operating loss of around $6.4 billion.
Grok is the main reason for that loss. SpaceX’s large language model requires enormous investments in graphics chips, electricity, and other infrastructure for the company to train and operate it at all. Grok has also so far lagged behind models from Anthropic and OpenAI, both in terms of revenue and capabilities.
And this is precisely where leasing computing power proves to be a smart move. Even if Grok does not catch up with the competition immediately, the computing capacity leasing business shows investors that the company has a demonstrable path to profitability in its AI division as well.
A staggering company valuation
The remaining question is why all of this is being discussed so much right now. Following last month’s record share offering, SpaceX is valued at $1.8 trillion, and analysts are pressuring Musk to justify such a figure. In the short term, the public listing also made Musk the world’s first dollar trillionaire.
Critics argue that the company’s market value is largely based on highly uncertain ventures that will require enormous investments before they even begin generating returns, assuming they succeed. Orbital data centers and colonies on Mars are still years away. By contrast, the deals with Anthropic and Google show that SpaceX can extract billions from infrastructure it already owns.
Other customers will also be interested in SpaceX’s spare capacity, because virtually everyone is currently racing to secure computing power first.
Sources: reuters.com and fortune.com
