Elon Musk Names Anthropic as Leading AI Model Amid Industry Surprise

Elon Musk has publicly reversed his previous skepticism about Anthropic, now calling it the leading company in artificial intelligence. This shift comes as Anthropic gains widespread recognition for its advanced AI models Mythos and Fable, launched in June, which are praised for their sophisticated reasoning and agentic capabilities. Despite a temporary pause due to U.S. export restrictions, these models resumed full operation in early July.

Anthropic is strengthening its presence in the enterprise market, with its Fable 5 model, designed for complex tasks and software development, available on major cloud platforms including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. This broad exposure has translated into significant financial success, with quarterly profits exceeding one billion dollars.

A notable aspect of this development is the direct business relationship between Musk and Anthropic. The company leases SpaceX’s massive Colossus 1 computing infrastructure in Tennessee, which features over 220,000 NVIDIA GPU processors and a capacity exceeding 300 megawatts. The six-month agreement includes a mutual exit clause, but Musk has stated he does not intend to cut Anthropic’s access to these resources.

Meanwhile, Musk’s own AI venture, xAI, continues to develop its Grok model family, with Grok 4.5 showing competitive performance against Anthropic’s flagship Claude Opus 4.8. Musk’s endorsement of Anthropic amid this direct competition is seen as unusual and possibly influenced by economic interests and infrastructure dependencies.

Anthropic’s valuation has recently surpassed $1.2 trillion in secondary markets, marking a dramatic rise that places it among the world’s top technology companies. Its annual revenues have surged from $9 billion to over $60 billion in a short period, demonstrating both technological leadership and strong business growth.