Anthropic to consider using SpaceX orbital data center satellites
Artificial intelligence company Anthropic will study use of orbital data centers being developed by SpaceX.
The two companies announced agreements May 6 giving Anthropic, developer of a line of AI products known as Claude, access to both terrestrial data centers as well as potential use of SpaceX's orbital data center.
In the near term, Anthropic will purchase all the capacity of a SpaceX terrestrial data center, Colossus 1, with more than 300 megawatts of computing capacity. Anthropic said that capacity will allow it to raise limits on usage of Claude products for its customers.
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"As part of this agreement, we have also expressed interest in partnering with SpaceX to develop multiple gigawatts of orbital AI compute capacity," Anthropic added, but did not provide additional details, such as when the capacity might be available or at what cost.
Anthropic said it made the deal to address growth that is outpacing expectations. "This is the first year that we have grown faster than the exponential," said Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, during a developers conference May 6. Through the first quarter of 2026, he said the company was growing, in terms of revenue and usage, at an annualized rate of 80 times last year's levels.
"That is the reason we have had difficulties with compute," he said, as the company had planned for growth at up to a factor of 10. "As you saw today with the SpaceX compute deal, we're working as quickly as possible to provide more compute than we have in the past. We'll continue to do so."
SpaceX announced in late January plans to deploy up to one million satellites to serve as orbital data centers. Those spacecraft, the company said, were needed to meet the growing demand from AI applications.
"The compute required to train and operate the next generation of these [AI] systems is outpacing what terrestrial power, land, and cooling can deliver on the timelines that matter," SpaceX said in a statement about the Anthropic deal.
The deal is the first sign that SpaceX was willing to offer the orbital data center to customers other than itself. Days after the orbital data center filing, SpaceX merged with xAI, an AI company founded, like SpaceX, by Elon Musk. In March, SpaceX said it would develop a massive chip fabrication plant, dubbed Terafab, to support its orbital data center ambitions.
Several other companies are also pursuing orbital data centers, either for their own AI applications or to offer the computing capacity to AI companies. Starcloud raised $170 million in March for its planned constellation of up to 88,000 satellites to serve as orbital data centers, while Blue Origin filed plans in March for a constellation of up to 51,600 orbital data center satellites, called Project Sunrise.
SpaceX argues it is best positioned to develop such spacecraft given its own satellite manufacturing and launch capabilities, particularly with the Starship launch vehicle in development.
"SpaceX is the only organization with the launch cadence, mass-to-orbit economics and constellation operations experience to make orbital compute a near-term engineering program rather than a research concept," it stated in its announcement of the Anthropic deal. "If engineering challenges can be overcome, space-based compute offers near-limitless sustainable power with less impact on Earth."
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