Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
impulser_ | on: SpaceX S-1
"in May 2026, we entered into Cloud Services Agreements with Anthropic PBC (“Anthropic”), an AI research and development public benefit corporation, with respect to access to compute capacity across COLOSSUS and COLOSSUS II. Pursuant to these agreements, the customer has agreed to pay us $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, with capacity ramping in May and June 2026 at a reduced fee"

Anthropic is paying them 1.25 billion per month to serve Claude in their data centers. That's more revenue than Starlink. In fact that's their largest revenue stream lol.

kennethrc | parent | next
> COLOSSUS and COLOSSUS II

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177

It may be sick, but someone's got a sense of humor over there :)

loading story #48218723
loading story #48216699
loading story #48218577
loading story #48216765
loading story #48219982
chvid | parent | next
As far as I can Google the colossus data centers did cost about 7-10 and 18 B respectively.

Renting them out in part at 1.25 B pr month sounds like a very good deal for spacex.

loading story #48223871
loading story #48216780
loading story #48218914
ykl | parent | next
At the time of the announcement IIRC the deal was only for Colossus 1. Is Anthropic also leasing Colossus 2 new?

At the time the consensus narrative was that SpaceX no longer needed Colossus 1 for Grok and that was why it could be leased to Anthropic while Colossus 2 would handle Grok training and inference. Does Anthropic also leasing Colossus 2 change this?

loading story #48214811
neosat | parent | next
has anyone done the math on: 1. cost to build out and run the data centers 2. cost of compute (hardware and energy) 3. depreciation of legacy GPU and thus value at the end of 3 years.

And then compare the $45B revenue from Anthropic to see if it's mostly break even or if one of Anthropic/SpaceX came out ahead on the contract.

loading story #48215513
loading story #48215700
loading story #48215165
loading story #48214928
loading story #48215764
loading story #48217703
cherioo | parent | next
It’s also interesting that Cursor (that spacex is acquiring ) also just announced yesterday they are training in colossus.

So who’s using it? Is spacex just renting out parts of their data center? Or is cursor done done?

mvkel | parent | next
If this doesn't completely destroy any benefit of doubt that people have in Dario, I don't know what to say. The guy has been speaking out of both sides of his mouth since the foundation of Anth. Over and over he repeated that Anth's investment in compute would not be reckless; it would represent sanity and be proportional to growth. Over and over Anth told users that the models weren't nerfed overnight, we were just prompting wrong. As expected, Anth simply failed to make the early compute deals when everyone else did, and are now forced to be on the wrong end of price gouging just to keep pace. Actions speak louder than words.
nl | root | parent | next
I don't see how this follows at all?

It's true that Anthropic didn't buy as much compute as OpenAI. But OpenAI's compute purchases are one of the largest investments in human history.

It's also true that they are now scrambling for compute, and might be paying more than OpenAI paid. But now they have the revenue to justify it!

To me it is the opposite of "speaking out of both sides of his mouth" - he's been consistent in his "we won't be reckless in buying compute too far ahead of demand" message.

Traster | root | parent | next
I don't think this is right. Anthropic's growth in the last 6 months went hockey stick in quite an unexpected way (eclipsing OpenAI), so they've done what is sensible - they've increased their compute spend. I don't know if what they're buying from SpaceX is good value, I think there's plenty of reasons to think they got a fine deal. X AI failed. Everyone left. So SpaceX is sitting with a bunch of empty server farms. Yes, Anthropic are desparate for compute, but SpaceX are desparate to IPO a company with double digit billion dollar revenue for $2T so I think there's good reason that this deal represents reasonable value.
jatora | root | parent | next
skeptical of someone who talks about anthropic enough that they think 'anth' is a reasonable abbreviation lol. maybe youre not wrong but youre definitely biased and not coming to conclusions in a rational way
khazhoux | root | parent
How does taking a shortcut on the name indicate bias? Or, are people similarly biased when they talk about msft, nv, fb, OAI, ...?
loading story #48220236
chilmers | root | parent | next
So you're complaining that his actions matched his words?

He didn't make compute deals until he saw the growth necessary to justify them. As a result, they're paying over-the-odds compared to if they'd have make deals earlier. Maybe that was a poor business decision, but I'm not sure how it represents speaking out of "both sides of his mouth"? Sounds like he was honest.

lz400 | root | parent
Even if we consider what they pay for colossus high (I've no idea, I haven't looked at the numbers), wouldn't this a bit be different from "investing in infrastructure"? They're not building the DC themselves, they're just renting, they can scale down to 0 anytime and not have pressure to recover costs, they don't have debt on the HW, etc.
JCTheDenthog | root | parent
At least from how it's described in the filing, it sounds like they're committed through 2029 on the deal with SpaceX. So they can't just pull out without a massive lawsuit from SpaceX.
kgc | parent | next
If my napkin math is right, Anthropic will make SpaceX/Xai whole on the initial investment for Colossus 2 + operating costs + a small profit by the end of the contract. No massive profits, although they may be able to fudge accounting to make it seem that way.
loading story #48219877
etempleton | parent | next
The whole AI world really is completely circular spending where every one loses money along the way. The only one really making any money is Nvidia.
loading story #48217325
loading story #48217845
loading story #48216526
loading story #48222184
loading story #48216447
LarsDu88 | parent | next
Wow! 3 years is an eternity at this level.
loading story #48215333
baron816 | parent | next
Everyone laughed at Allbirds getting into the business of selling compute.
loading story #48215252
gjsman-1000 | parent | next
$45 billion for a 3 year rental.
loading story #48214654
loading story #48214624
keeda | parent | next
Whoa. I've said before, but I think Dario severely underestimated the coming demand and ensuing need for compute, and would need to pay through the nose when the crunch hit. I suspect that Google deal also worked out better for Google. This data point supports that view.

While Altman got laughed out of the room as a "podcasting bro" asking for trillions in investment in compute, Dario was going on about how difficult it is to forecast capacity on the Dwarkesh podcast. Seems like a major unforced error on Dario's part. What I cannot understand is how they both came to such different perspectives; my best guess is that ChatGPT has so much more traffic that OpenAI could gauge the trends much better.

This won't hurt Anthropic long-term of course, but this won't look great on that balance sheet, that too right around the time they plan to IPO.

loading story #48216208
loading story #48216247
| parent | next
{"deleted":true,"id":48215827,"parent":48214494,"time":1779320027,"type":"comment"}
| parent
{"deleted":true,"id":48215427,"parent":48214494,"time":1779317655,"type":"comment"}