SpaceX signs $6.3 billion compute deal with open-source AI lab Reflection AI

First came Anthropic, then Google. Now, open-source AI startup Reflection is tapping SpaceX for its abundant source of AI chips. Reflection AI will pay $150 million a month beginning July 1, 2026 through 2029 for immediate access to Nvidia's latest GB300 AI chips and supporting hardware across SpaceX's Colossus 2 data center near Memphis, Tennessee, the company told TechCrunch.

The deal is worth up to $6.3 billion and either company has the option to end the contract with 90 days' notice after the first three months. The deal is smaller than SpaceX's deals with Anthropic and Google, which cost the companies $1.25 billion per month and $920 million per month respectively. Those contracts also run through July 2029, although Elon Musk has publicly downplayed the three-year term, emphasizing that the contracts can be cancelled at any time.

Reflection used the compute deal — its first — to tout the value of its open-weight AI strategy, which it has pitched as an open-source alternative to closed frontier labs like Anthropic and OpenAI. Open-weight AI models, which publicly release their trained parameters, have received more attention following the U.S. government's ban of Anthropic's closed models, Fable and Mythos.

The startup, which was founded in 2024 by two former Google DeepMind researchers, said the compute deal is one of 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 spokesperson said in an emailed 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, a company founded by Elon Musk that is now part of SpaceX, for its own AI efforts.

As its internal pursuits have faltered, SpaceX leveraged its valuable AI chip holdings and began renting them out to some of the world's top AI labs. Why this matters: The deal between SpaceX and Reflection AI highlights the growing importance of open-source AI models and the increasing demand for computing power to support their development. As the AI ecosystem continues to evolve, the need for accessible and affordable computing resources will only grow, making deals like this one crucial for the advancement of AI research.

For Reflection AI, this deal provides a significant boost to its open-weight AI strategy, allowing it to scale its models and compete with closed frontier labs. For SpaceX, it demonstrates the company's ability to capitalize on its valuable AI chip holdings and expand its presence in the AI infrastructure market. However, questions remain about the long-term implications of these large-scale compute deals and the potential risks associated with the concentration of AI computing power in the hands of a few major players.