Following in the footsteps of Anthropic and Google, the open-source AI startup Reflection has secured access to SpaceX's substantial AI chip resources.
As reported to TechCrunch, Reflection AI has committed to a monthly payment of $150 million, starting July 1, 2026, and extending through 2029. This agreement grants the startup immediate access to Nvidia's cutting-edge GB300 AI chips and associated hardware housed within SpaceX's Colossus 2 data center, situated near Memphis, Tennessee. The comprehensive deal is valued at up to $6.3 billion, with a provision allowing either party to terminate the contract with 90 days' notice following the initial three-month period.
This agreement is notably smaller in scale compared to SpaceX's previous arrangements with Anthropic and Google, which entailed monthly payments of $1.25 billion and $920 million, respectively. While those contracts also extend until July 2029, Elon Musk has publicly understated the significance of their multi-year duration, highlighting the inherent flexibility for cancellation at any point.
Marking its inaugural compute acquisition, Reflection leveraged this deal to underscore the merits of its open-weight AI strategy. The company positions this approach as an open-source counterpoint to proprietary frontier AI laboratories such as Anthropic and OpenAI. Open-weight AI models, characterized by the public release of their trained parameters, have garnered increased interest, particularly in the wake of the U.S. government's prohibition on Anthropic's closed models, Fable and Mythos.
Established in 2024 by two former Google DeepMind researchers, the startup stated that this compute agreement represents one of the most substantial open AI infrastructure commitments announced to date.
In an emailed statement, a company spokesperson remarked, "Recent developments underscore the critical role of open source within the AI ecosystem, as a growing number of nations and enterprises acknowledge the inherent risks and costs tied to an exclusive reliance on closed models." The spokesperson further added, "Our agreement with SpaceXAI signifies Reflection's strategic prominence within the frontier AI landscape, and this increased computational power provides us with extended capacity to develop the world's leading open models at scale."
The Colossus data center, initially constructed by xAI—an Elon Musk-founded company now integrated into SpaceX—was intended for its proprietary AI initiatives. However, as its internal projects encountered setbacks, SpaceX capitalized on its valuable inventory of AI chips by offering them for lease to prominent AI laboratories worldwide.
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