The first week of May 2026 reshuffled the AI industry’s power structure in three moves that happened within eight days of each other. On April 27, OpenAI and Microsoft rewrote their partnership to end cloud exclusivity. On May 6, Elon Musk dissolved xAI into SpaceX — and on the same day, SpaceX signed a deal giving Anthropic full access to the Colossus 1 data center. These aren’t coincidences. They’re symptoms of the same shift: AI’s battleground is no longer just model quality — it’s who controls compute.
OpenAI Goes Multi-Cloud
On April 27, OpenAI and Microsoft announced a fundamental restructuring of their partnership1. The changes are sweeping:
| Provision | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft IP license | Exclusive, indefinite | Non-exclusive, through 2032 |
| Cloud hosting | Azure only | Any cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure) |
| Revenue share to Microsoft | 20% of OpenAI revenue, uncapped | 20% of OpenAI revenue, capped through 2030 |
| Revenue share to OpenAI | Microsoft paid OpenAI a share | Stopped entirely |
| AGI clause | Present — triggered special terms | Removed |
The AGI clause was a particularly fraught piece of the original deal. It stipulated that once OpenAI declared AGI, the revenue-sharing and IP-licensing arrangements would shift. Microsoft had previously used this clause to pressure OpenAI — notably when OpenAI explored acquiring the AI coding tool Windsurf last year, Microsoft reportedly invoked the AGI terms, and OpenAI backed off. The new agreement eliminates the clause outright2.
The trigger for this restructuring was Amazon’s $50 billion investment in OpenAI back in February 2026 ($15 billion upfront, $35 billion contingent). AWS became the exclusive third-party distribution partner for Frontier, OpenAI’s enterprise platform, and OpenAI committed to expanding its AWS cloud contract by $100 billion over eight years3. The problem? At the time, OpenAI’s exclusivity with Microsoft was still in effect. The Financial Times reported that Microsoft was considering legal action3.
The new deal resolves that tension directly. On the announcement day, Microsoft’s stock dipped about 3%, while Amazon and Alphabet edged up. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy posted on X that OpenAI models would be available on AWS Bedrock “in the coming weeks”4. By April 28, OpenAI models officially launched on AWS4.
OpenAI revenue chief Denise Dresser put it plainly in an internal memo: “Our partnership with Microsoft has been important, but it limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are — for many that’s Bedrock.”4
For OpenAI, the calculus is straightforward — it’s preparing for an IPO this year. Removing cloud lock-in means it can sell to any enterprise regardless of their cloud provider. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives called the restructured deal “clearing a major overhang in the Microsoft/OpenAI partnership”5.
xAI Dissolves, Becomes SpaceXAI
While OpenAI pried itself open to multi-cloud, Musk went in the opposite direction — folding xAI entirely into SpaceX.
xAI was founded in 2023 after Musk’s split from OpenAI. By early 2026, the company was struggling. On February 2, SpaceX acquired xAI in an all-stock transaction valuing the combined entity at $1.25 trillion ($1 trillion for SpaceX, $250 billion for xAI)6. Musk’s announcement was characteristically grand: “This doesn’t just open a new chapter — it opens a new book.”6
The integration didn’t go smoothly. Between February and March, all 11 of xAI’s co-founders departed7. By late March, Musk was the only remaining founder. He publicly acknowledged the situation, saying xAI “wasn’t built right the first time” and was “being rebuilt from the foundation up”7.
The financial math explains why. According to TechCrunch, xAI was burning approximately $1 billion per month on compute while generating only about $107 million in monthly revenue6. For context, OpenAI was reportedly raising at ~$300 billion valuation with an estimated ~$100 billion annual run rate. xAI couldn’t go public on its own. SpaceX, with roughly $8 billion in annual profit (on ~$15-16 billion revenue in 2025)8, could absorb the burn.
On May 6, Musk formally announced “xAI dissolving as a separate company — it will be SpaceXAI, the AI products of SpaceX”9. The same day, SpaceX filed trademark applications for SpaceXAI covering SaaS, satellite data center services, and orbital compute infrastructure10.
The logic: xAI couldn’t compete with OpenAI and Anthropic on its own. But SpaceX controls Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 data centers, the Starlink network, and Starship. AI inside SpaceX makes more strategic sense than xAI going it alone.
SpaceX filed confidentially for an IPO on April 1, targeting a $1.75-2 trillion valuation, with the roadshow scheduled for the week of June 811. Having Anthropic as a Colossus 1 tenant adds an AI-infrastructure-as-revenue story to the IPO narrative.
SpaceX Becomes Anthropic’s GPU Landlord
The most surprising announcement on May 6 was the compute deal between SpaceX and Anthropic.
Anthropic gets full capacity of the Colossus 1 data center in Memphis — over 300 MW, 220,000+ NVIDIA GPUs (a mix of H100, H200, and GB200 accelerators), all online within a month12.
The deal is remarkable given the history between Musk and Anthropic. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by Dario and Daniela Amodei (former OpenAI employees). Musk had been sharply critical of the company — in February he posted on X that Anthropic “hates Western civilization” and called the company “misanthropic”10.
But on May 6, Musk posted a strikingly different take, saying he’d “spent a lot of time with the Anthropic team this week” and that “everyone I met is incredibly capable and genuinely cares about doing the right thing. No one set off my evil detector. As long as they stay self-critical, Claude should be great.”13
The compute needs driving the deal are staggering. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said at a developer event that the company “experienced faster-than-exponential growth” in Q1 2026 — 80x year-over-year in usage and revenue14. Claude Code is estimated to account for roughly 4% of all public GitHub commits12. User growth is outpacing Anthropic’s compute planning.
| Metric | Before Deal | After Deal |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Code rate limits (5h window) | Standard | Doubled for all paid users |
| Peak throttling | Applied during high usage | Removed |
| Opus API rate limits | Tiered, restrictive | Significantly raised |
| Colossus 1 GPUs available to Anthropic | 0 | 220,000+ (full capacity) |
All changes took effect on announcement day12.
Anthropic has been stacking compute deals aggressively:
| Partner | Commitment | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| SpaceX (this deal) | Colossus 1: 300+ MW, 220K GPUs | Within a month |
| Amazon | Up to 5 GW total, ~1 GW this year | 2026+ |
| Google + Broadcom | 5 GW | 2027 |
| Microsoft + NVIDIA | $30B Azure capacity | Rolling |
| Fluidstack | $50B US AI infrastructure | Rolling |
But the deal has a longer-term angle that gets more interesting. Anthropic “expressed interest in partnering with SpaceX on multi-GW scale orbital AI compute”15. SpaceX said in its announcement that “the compute required to train and run next-generation systems already exceeds what ground-based power, land, and cooling can support”16.
This isn’t science fiction anymore. SpaceX filed with the FCC in January for a constellation of up to 1 million satellites designed as orbital data centers15. Starcloud has raised $170 million. Blue Origin’s Project Sunrise plans 51,600 orbital data center satellites. Alphabet has a space data center project. But SpaceX is the only company that both builds satellites and operates Starship as a launch vehicle.
What This All Adds Up To
Three patterns emerge when you stack these events together:
Compute is the new oil. Every deal is about locking up compute capacity. OpenAI goes to AWS (cumulative cloud commitments now exceeding $100 billion). Anthropic takes Colossus 1. xAI dissolves so it can eat off SpaceX’s infrastructure. Model quality gaps are narrowing, but the compute concentration is accelerating.
Cloud exclusivity is dead for frontier AI. OpenAI walked out of the Azure walled garden. The top labs will run on every cloud simultaneously. AWS, Azure, and GCP are all serving both OpenAI and Anthropic now. For enterprise buyers, this is good news — you don’t need to switch clouds to switch models.
The AI IPO wave is forming. OpenAI is clearing contractual obstacles to present a clean story. SpaceX is on an April-to-June IPO sprint. Anthropic is reportedly raising at a ~$900 billion valuation11. All three are preparing for public markets in 2026, and compute deals are the narrative investors will hear.
Musk is building a single bet. From OpenAI co-founder to founding xAI, from acquiring X to dissolving xAI into SpaceX, from calling Anthropic hostile to renting them 220,000 GPUs — it looks chaotic, but the target is consistent: space-based compute. Colossus 1 earns rent from Anthropic. Colossus 2 trains SpaceXAI. The orbital data center constellation goes up on Starship. Everything else is interim.
The first week of May 2026 didn’t just bring news. It redrew the map of who owns the compute that powers AI. That map won’t stay still for long.
References
Footnotes
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OpenAI Official Blog — “Next phase of Microsoft partnership”, detailing IP license changes and revenue restructuring, April 27, 2026 https://openai.com/blog/microsoft-partnership-next-phase ↩
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The Verge — Microsoft and OpenAI’s famed AGI agreement is dead, April 30, 2026 https://www.theverge.com/2026/4/30/openai-microsoft-agi-clause-removed ↩
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Financial Times — Microsoft weighed legal action over Amazon-OpenAI cloud deal, covering Amazon’s $50B investment and Microsoft’s legal considerations, March 2026 https://www.ft.com/content/amazon-openai-cloud-legal ↩ ↩2
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CNBC — OpenAI brings models to AWS after ending exclusivity with Microsoft, including Denise Dresser quote, April 28, 2026 https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/28/openai-aws-microsoft-exclusivity.html ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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Business Insider — OpenAI and Microsoft strike new deal, including Dan Ives quote and revenue share details, April 27, 2026 https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-microsoft-deal-restructuring-2026-4 ↩
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TechCrunch — SpaceX officially acquires xAI, valuation details and founder departures, February 2, 2026 https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/02/spacex-xai-acquisition/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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CNBC — Musk says xAI must be ‘rebuilt’ after losing all co-founders, March 13, 2026 https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/13/musk-xai-rebuilt.html ↩ ↩2
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CNBC — Musk’s xAI needs SpaceX for money, covering xAI’s financial struggles and SpaceX’s profitability, February 2, 2026 https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/02/xai-spacex-musk-acquisition.html ↩
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The Verge — xAI is becoming SpaceXAI, May 6, 2026 https://www.theverge.com/2026/5/6/xai-dissolved-spacexai ↩
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Semafor — Anthropic’s tie up with Elon Musk paves way for space data centers, including history of Musk’s criticism, May 6, 2026 https://www.semafor.com/article/anthropic-spacex-orbital-compute ↩ ↩2
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CoinDesk — Anthropic signs SpaceX for Colossus 1 compute ahead of June IPO, covering SpaceX IPO timeline, May 6, 2026 https://www.coindesk.com/spacex-ipo-anthropic-compute-deal ↩ ↩2
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Anthropic Official Blog — Higher usage limits and compute deal with SpaceX, including Claude Code GitHub share and Colossus 1 details, May 6, 2026 https://www.anthropic.com/blog/spacex-compute-deal ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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CNBC — Anthropic, SpaceX announce compute deal, including Musk’s “evil detector” quote, May 6, 2026 https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/06/anthropic-spacex-compute-deal.html ↩
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Bloomberg — Anthropic signs computing deal with SpaceX, covering 80x YoY growth, May 6, 2026 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-06/anthropic-signs-compute-deal-with-spacex ↩
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SpaceNews — Anthropic to consider using SpaceX orbital data center satellites, covering FCC filing and orbital compute plans, May 7, 2026 https://spacenews.com/anthropic-spacex-orbital-data-center/ ↩ ↩2
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SpaceX Official — Anthropic partnership announcement, covering orbital compute rationale and Colossus capacity, May 6, 2026 https://www.spacex.com/updates/anthropic-partnership ↩