Washington DC - AI startup Anthropic announced Wednesday it has agreed to a major computing partnership with Elon Musk's SpaceX, securing access to a vast data center as the Claude maker scrambles to keep pace with surging demand for its AI services.

Under the deal, Anthropic will use all of the compute capacity at SpaceX's Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee – a facility originally built to power Musk's rival AI venture, xAI.

The agreement gives Anthropic access to more than 300 megawatts of capacity, backed by over 220,000 Nvidia AI chips, by the end of May.

The company said the additional capacity would directly benefit subscribers to its Claude Pro and Claude Max plans.

Anthropic also announced it was immediately letting users do more with its technology.

The company said it was doubling the amount of Claude Code – an AI-powered coding assistant that can write, edit, and debug software – eliminating restrictions that had previously cut access during busy periods, and allowing developers to make more requests to its most powerful AI models.

The SpaceX deal marks a striking partnership between two companies whose leaders have been publicly at odds.

Musk wrote in February that Anthropic "hates Western Civilization" and questioned whether there was a "more hypocritical company than Anthropic."

But on Wednesday, Musk changed his tone, writing on X that he had spent time with senior Anthropic staff over the past week and was "impressed."

"Everyone I met was highly competent and cared a great deal about doing the right thing," he wrote.

SpaceX merged with xAI earlier this year in a deal valuing the two companies at $1.25 trillion. The company is widely expected to pursue an IPO this year that could be among the largest in history.

The Colossus facility has been a source of controversy.

xAI installed dozens of natural gas-burning turbines to power the site, claiming no federal permit was required because they were only for temporary use – a move that drew persistent protests from civil rights groups who said it worsened air pollution in the Memphis area.

The SpaceX pact is the latest in a string of major compute agreements Anthropic has announced in recent months.

These include megadeals with Amazon, Google and Broadcom, Microsoft and Nvidia, and an infrastructure investment with Fluidstack.