Elon Musk praises Mythos/Fable, promises not to ‘cut off’ Anthropic

Should Anthropic trust Elon Musk to host its models? After users on replied with glowing praise for the AI ​​lab. He said such a trick was “not my style.”

“I was clearly wrong about Anthropic,” Musk wrote on Thursday, referring to his September 2025 message on X in which he said, “Winning was never in the range of possible outcomes for Anthropic.” Of course, Anthropic could be considered a winner even then; The company is said to have the largest AI market share among enterprises.

It looks like those anti-Anthropic days are behind Musk – and not just on X. As of July 2026, Anthropic has been one of SpaceX’s largest customers.

To recap, Anthropic signed a deal in May to purchase 300 megawatts of computing power, the entire output of xAI’s Colossus 1 data center near Memphis, Tennessee. (Musk’s xAI merged with SpaceX in February.) Anthropic agreed to pay $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, a deal worth about $40 billion in revenue for SpaceX’s xAI unit. Google has also signed a deal to lease SpaceX infrastructure through June 2029 for $920 million per month.

Musk emphasizes that this was not a dangerous decision by Anthropic and that he is full of admiration for the rival.

“They are the clear leader in AI right now. No company has released a model as good as Mythos/Fable and they will undoubtedly have Mythos 2 ready soon. And I would never cut them off in a way that would seriously hurt them, even as a competitor. That’s not my style,” he wrote.

As evidence of his don’t-squeeze-competitors style, he offered Tesla’s 2014 decision (which was outlined in a now-deleted company blog post and now housed under the patent lien) not to initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who in good faith wants to use their technology. He also noted that Tesla opened up its Supercharger network and charging port design to competitors.

“SpaceX launches competing satellite systems without raising prices or using unfair terms. Even my worst enemies can attack me on this platform,” he wrote, citing another example.

Of course, Musk isn’t exactly above tactics aimed at rivals, especially those with whom he has a history. For example, he sued OpenAI.

However, Anthropic doesn’t have to rely on Musk sticking to his ‘style’. There would certainly be contractual ramifications if Musk were to suddenly shut down Anthropic’s infrastructure. Not to mention the huge benefits to SpaceX of keeping that deal intact. Not only does Anthropic pay handsomely, but SpaceX engineers can learn how to build and support Anthropic’s fast-growing AI, just like Amazon’s engineers do.

That proximity can also have other benefits. During his lawsuit against OpenAI, Musk acknowledged that AI “distillation” was real – a process in which a model maker sets up many fake accounts to send prompts to a competitor to learn how it works. Like the New York Times reportedWhen asked by a lawyer if xAI had ever distilled technology from OpenAI, Musk replied: “In general, AI companies distill other AI companies.”

Anthropic in February accused three Chinese model makers to do this to Claude. Presumably, Anthropic and Google believe they have safeguards that SpaceX won’t do this while using the infrastructure. But hosting Anthropic’s computing power could still give SpaceX more insight into how the company operates than most competitors ever would.

There seems to be only benefit for Musk’s company in this partnership at the moment. As for tomorrow, and as the three-year contract ages, who knows?