The Information: SpaceX's AI unit held talks on leasing computing capacity to Microsoft

SpaceX's AI unit held talks over the summer about leasing computing capacity to Microsoft, The Information reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The status of the discussions is unclear, and no agreement between the two companies has been confirmed.

From rockets to rented compute

Elon Musk initially resisted turning the business into a cloud provider; now the company is racing to add capacity to meet computing demand. SpaceX integrated xAI in early 2026, and with it came the Colossus data centers in Memphis, now the backbone of the surplus-capacity leasing business the company started earlier this year.

The tenant list

Anthropic will pay up to $1.25 billion per month through May 2029. Google is set to pay $920 million a month from October 2026, under a contract that runs roughly 32 months. Reflection AI signed on at $150 million per month, with a deal running from July 2026 through 2029. An unnamed customer will add about $1.1 billion a month beginning in December. Overall, SpaceX's compute lease revenue reached an annualized $41.1 billion as reported in September 2026.

The capacity race

Musk said about 420,000 Nvidia GPUs will come online in November as part of an expansion of the company's Memphis data center campus. The additional capacity will help fulfill new commitments, including the deal worth about $1.1 billion a month that is scheduled to begin in December. In August 2026, speculation circulated that Microsoft was seeking 3 GW of capacity to cover a shortfall, in a potential deal valued at about $150 billion in those reports; it has not been verified.

SpaceX reported 1.4 GW of nameplate capacity online as of June 30, 2026, up from 1.0 GW in the first quarter, and aims to exceed 2 GW by the end of 2026, with a possible approach to 10 GW by the end of 2027. If the parties sign a deal, Microsoft would become another major customer, alongside Anthropic and Google. For now, it is unclear whether SpaceX will meet its year-end capacity target and whether the talks produce a final agreement.

Sources: Breaking The News · The Information · Crypto Briefing