Elon Musk’s xAI takes a new turn in deal with Anthropic

Staff Report: PNN
A major surprise has emerged in the artificial intelligence sector through a new partnership between Elon Musk’s company xAI and AI firm Anthropic. Under the agreement, Anthropic will use the full computing capacity of xAI’s “Colossus 1” data center. Technology analysts say this deal signals a significant shift in xAI’s business strategy.

The partnership was jointly announced by the two companies on Wednesday. As a result of the agreement, Anthropic will be able to rapidly expand its AI model operations. On the other hand, xAI will be able to turn its surplus infrastructure into a direct source of revenue.

Analysts believe the financial value of this agreement could be worth several billion dollars. Through this deal, xAI—previously known mainly as a heavy investor in AI model development—is now also beginning to position itself as a provider of computing power.

Elon Musk stated on the social media platform X that xAI has already shifted its training operations to a more advanced facility called “Colossus 2.” As a result, the excess capacity of the older infrastructure has been made available to Anthropic.

According to experts in the technology sector, xAI’s current product is mainly centered around the “Grok” chatbot. However, after controversies earlier this year regarding image generation features, usage of Grok declined. In this situation, utilizing the excess capacity of large data centers commercially is being seen as a profitable decision for the company.

Specialists say this move is gradually pushing xAI toward a “neocloud” business model. In other words, alongside developing its own AI products, the company appears to be moving toward renting GPU and computing power to other AI firms.

Meanwhile, major technology companies typically use their computing resources for their own AI development rather than selling them externally. Recently, Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted that the company missed potential revenue from Google Cloud due to insufficient capacity. Similarly, Meta is investing heavily in building new infrastructure for its AI projects.

In this context, xAI’s decision is being seen as somewhat unusual by analysts. They suggest that the company may be prioritizing infrastructure-based business over becoming a purely AI software-focused firm.

However, critics question whether xAI’s high-ambition AI projects will progress as expected if it sells a large portion of its computing power to competitors in the long term.

The technology market is now debating whether Elon Musk’s xAI will remain a full-scale AI company or transform into one of the world’s largest computing infrastructure providers.