Reports: Anthropic is paying xAI about $1.25B per month for GPU access

Anthropic’s compute strategy is coming into view through two disclosures made on May 21. CNBC reported that Anthropic is in talks with Microsoft to use the software company’s Maia 200 AI chips, while SpaceX disclosed that Anthropic will pay $1.25 billion a month through May 2029 for computing power tied to xAI infrastructure. The pairing matters because the two reports describe different parts of the same problem: securing enough capacity to run and expand Claude. CNBC said Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently told an event that the company has had “difficulties with compute,” as demand for Claude and Claude Code increased this year. ### Where does the $1.25 billion figure come from? SpaceX disclosed the payment terms on Wednesday, according to CNBC and Yahoo Finance, which both said Anthropic is set to pay $1.25 billion per month for computing power. (cnbc.com) Yahoo Finance said that pace implies about $15 billion a year in rented compute. The filing-based disclosure gives the market a rare public number for frontier-scale AI infrastructure. (cnbc.com) CNBC reported the payments run through May 2029. Other secondary reports tied to the same filing said the arrangement involves Colossus capacity in Memphis, though CNBC’s report focused on the payment schedule rather than technical deployment details. ### Why is Anthropic talking to Microsoft at the same time? (cnbc.com) Microsoft is in talks to supply Anthropic with its custom Maia chips, CNBC reported on May 21, citing a person familiar with the matter. The report said Anthropic has not yet closed a deal with Microsoft over Maia use. Microsoft announced the second-generation Maia chip in January, but CNBC reported it has not made the processor available to Azure customers. (cnbc.com) CNBC also said Microsoft has told investors the Maia 200 would run OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 model, and Chief Executive Satya Nadella said in April that the chips offered more than 30% improved tokens per dollar versus the latest silicon in Microsoft’s fleet. ### What does this say about Anthropic’s current supplier mix? Anthropic already relies on multiple cloud providers. CNBC reported that the company uses cloud services from Amazon and Google in addition to its expanding ties with Microsoft. The Maia discussions therefore look less like a single-provider switch than an effort to add another source of training and inference capacity. (cnbc.com) Bloomberg, citing The Information, separately reported that Anthropic was in talks to rent Microsoft AI server chips as it sought more computing power to meet demand for its services. ### Why are custom chips part of the story now? (cnbc.com) Microsoft, Amazon and Google have all been designing in-house AI chips as they try to reduce dependence on Nvidia hardware. CNBC said Microsoft is behind cloud rivals Amazon and Google in supplying customers with special-purpose AI silicon, which would make an Anthropic agreement a commercial win if one is completed. For Anthropic, the attraction appears to be capacity and efficiency. (bloomberg.com) CNBC reported that Maia 200 chips are already running inside Microsoft data centers in Arizona and Iowa, even though they are not yet broadly offered through Azure. ### What happens next? Anthropic has not announced a signed Maia contract, and CNBC said the Microsoft talks were still unresolved as of May 21. (cnbc.com) That leaves the xAI-linked compute commitment as the firmest disclosed piece of Anthropic’s near-term infrastructure plan. May 2029 is the key date in the disclosed payment schedule, while any next formal step on diversification would likely come from Microsoft, Anthropic or a future Azure product announcement involving Maia 200. (cnbc.com)