SpaceX partners with open source AI lab Reflection in compute deal
▼ Summary
– Open source AI startup Reflection will pay SpaceX $150 million per month from July 2026 through 2029 for access to Nvidia GB300 chips at the Colossus 2 data center, in a deal worth up to $6.3 billion.
– The contract can be canceled by either party with 90 days’ notice after the first three months.
– This deal is smaller than SpaceX’s agreements with Anthropic ($1.25 billion/month) and Google ($920 million/month), which also run through July 2029.
– Reflection uses the deal to promote its open-weight AI strategy as an alternative to closed models from labs like Anthropic and OpenAI.
– The Colossus data center was originally built by xAI for its own AI efforts, but SpaceX now rents out its chips to other AI labs.
An open source AI lab has become the latest high-profile client of SpaceX’s massive computing infrastructure, securing a multi-billion-dollar deal for access to Nvidia’s newest chips. Reflection AI will pay $150 million per month starting July 1, 2026, through 2029 for immediate access to Nvidia’s GB300 AI chips and supporting hardware at SpaceX’s Colossus 2 data center near Memphis, Tennessee. The contract, valued at up to $6.3 billion, allows either party to terminate with 90 days’ notice after the first three months.
This agreement follows similar but larger deals SpaceX struck with Anthropic and Google. Those companies pay $1.25 billion and $920 million per month, respectively, under contracts also running through July 2029. Elon Musk has consistently played down the three-year term, noting the cancellation clauses.
For Reflection, this first compute deal is a strategic milestone. The startup, founded in 2024 by two former Google DeepMind researchers, is using it to underline the value of its open-weight AI strategy. The company positions itself as an open source alternative to closed frontier labs like Anthropic and OpenAI. The open-weight approach , releasing trained model parameters publicly , has gained traction after the U. S. government banned Anthropic’s closed models, Fable and Mythos.
Reflection claims the agreement is among the largest announced open AI infrastructure commitments to date. “Recent events highlight how important open source is to the AI ecosystem, with more nations and enterprises recognizing the risks and costs associated with exclusively depending on closed models,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “Our deal with SpaceXAI signals Reflection’s strategic importance within the frontier AI ecosystem, and more compute means more runway to build the world’s best open models at scale.”
The Colossus data center was originally built by xAI, the AI company Musk founded that is now part of SpaceX. As xAI’s internal efforts have stalled, SpaceX has pivoted to renting out its valuable AI chip inventory to leading AI labs.
(Source: TechCrunch)
