Anthropic Raises Claude Code Limits After SpaceX Deal
Anthropic Doubles Claude Code Usage Limits, Credits New Compute Deal With SpaceX
Anthropic announced on Wednesday, May 6, 2026, a sweeping compute agreement with SpaceX that will give the AI company access to all of the capacity at SpaceX's Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee — and immediately translated that deal into higher usage limits for Claude Code users. The partnership, announced at Anthropic's developer conference in San Francisco, grants Anthropic access to more than 300 megawatts of new compute capacity and over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs, with the company stating that access would come "within the month."
The deal is significant not only for its scale but for its speed. While Anthropic has spent much of 2026 securing multi-gigawatt compute agreements with Amazon, Google, Broadcom, Microsoft, and NVIDIA, most of that capacity is not expected to come fully online until late 2026 or 2027. The SpaceX arrangement addresses a more immediate bottleneck — one that had become visibly frustrating for Claude users since Anthropic introduced peak-hour session limit reductions in late March 2026.
What Changes for Claude Users Right Now
Anthropic's official blog post outlined three immediate changes tied to the expanded compute access. First, the company is doubling Claude Code's five-hour rate limits for Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans. Second, it is removing the peak-hours limit reduction on Claude Code for Pro and Max accounts — a restriction that had been applied during weekdays from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. PT. Third, Anthropic is raising API rate limits considerably for its Claude Opus models.
The peak-hour restrictions, introduced in late March 2026, had drawn significant user complaints. At the time, Anthropic engineer Thariq Shihipar stated the changes would affect approximately 7 percent of Claude users — though that figure likely understated the impact on power users and developers who rely heavily on Claude Code during business hours.
Anthropic head of product Ami Vora made the announcement at the company's developer conference in San Francisco. "We're partnering with SpaceX to use all the capacity of their Colossus One data center," Vora told attendees, according to Axios. Anthropic's statement described the arrangement as providing "access to more than 300 megawatts of new capacity (over 220,000 Nvidia GPUs) within the month."
The SpaceX Partnership: Scale, Speed, and an Unlikely Alliance
Colossus 1, described across multiple outlets and by xAI's own announcement page as one of the world's largest and fastest-deployed AI supercomputers, features dense deployments of H100, H200, and GB200 NVIDIA accelerators. SpaceX, which merged with Elon Musk's xAI earlier in 2026, has since shifted its own AI training workloads to a newer Colossus 2 facility — making Colossus 1 available for external clients. Musk announced on X on Wednesday that "xAI will be dissolved as a separate company" and the combined entity will be called SpaceXAI.
The partnership is politically notable as well as technically significant. Musk had previously called Anthropic "misanthropic and evil" and written in February that the company "hates Western civilization." Anthropic had also previously cut SpaceX off from its API. On the day of the deal announcement, however, Musk appeared to soften his stance publicly. In posts on X, he wrote: "No one set off my evil detector" and added, "So long as they engage in critical self-examination, Claude will probably be good."
According to Axios, SpaceX acquired xAI in January 2026. The company also holds a deal with coding startup Cursor that gives it the option to purchase Cursor for $60 billion.
Beyond the immediate data center agreement, the deal includes Anthropic's expressed interest in partnering with SpaceX to develop multiple gigawatts of orbital AI compute capacity. The joint statement from SpaceX and xAI framed this ambition in stark terms: "The compute required to train and operate the next generation of these systems is outpacing what terrestrial power, land, and cooling can deliver on the timelines that matter." The statement also argued that "SpaceX is the only organization with the launch cadence, mass-to-orbit economics, and constellation operations experience to make orbital compute a near-term engineering program rather than a research concept."
A Rapidly Expanding Compute Portfolio
The SpaceX agreement adds to an already substantial infrastructure buildout that Anthropic has pursued aggressively in 2026. According to Anthropic's official blog post, the company's existing compute commitments include:
- An up-to-5-gigawatt agreement with Amazon, including nearly 1 GW of new capacity expected by the end of 2026, alongside an Amazon investment commitment of up to $25 billion.
- A 5 GW agreement with Google and Broadcom, coming online in 2027, backed by as much as $40 billion in future investment from Google.
- A strategic partnership with Microsoft and NVIDIA that includes $30 billion of Azure capacity.
- A $50 billion investment in American AI infrastructure with Fluidstack.
Anthropic's blog post also noted that some of its capacity expansion will be international, with its Amazon collaboration including additional inference capacity in Asia and Europe to support enterprise customers in regulated industries.
Taken together, these arrangements reflect a company that is moving aggressively to ensure its infrastructure keeps pace with demand — demand that, by its own measures, is growing rapidly. Anthropic reported reaching $30 billion in annualized revenue as of early May 2026, a figure that CNBC reported represents a sharp climb from approximately $9 billion at the end of 2025. More than 1,000 enterprise customers now spend over $1 million annually on Anthropic's services.
Valuation Talks Signal Continued Investor Confidence
Alongside the SpaceX announcement, Anthropic is reportedly in active talks with investors about raising fresh capital at a valuation of $900 billion — more than double its February 2026 valuation of $380 billion, which was itself established just three months ago in the company's most recent funding round. If completed, a round at that valuation would make Anthropic the most valuable private AI company in the world, surpassing OpenAI.
The timing of the SpaceX deal and the valuation discussions appears deliberate. By demonstrating that it can secure immediate, large-scale compute capacity — not just future commitments — Anthropic is signaling operational momentum to prospective investors ahead of what would be an enormous capital raise.
Why This Matters for the AI Industry
The Anthropic–SpaceX deal is a reminder that the constraints shaping AI development in 2026 are increasingly physical and logistical, not just algorithmic. Power availability, GPU supply, data center cooling, and land access have all emerged as genuine bottlenecks for frontier AI labs. Anthropic's stated interest in orbital compute — while still aspirational — reflects an acknowledgment that terrestrial infrastructure may not scale fast enough to meet next-generation AI training demands.
The deal also illustrates the complex, sometimes contradictory, relationships that define the current AI landscape. Competitors collaborate on infrastructure. Critics become compute suppliers. Companies that were adversarial months ago sign nine-figure agreements when the commercial incentives align.
For enterprise customers and developers who rely on Claude Code, the immediate impact is straightforward: higher limits, fewer interruptions during peak business hours, and an indication that Anthropic is actively investing in the infrastructure needed to sustain its growth trajectory.
For more tech news, visit our news section.
What's Next
Anthropic has indicated that additional capacity from its Amazon agreement — nearly 1 GW — is expected to come online by the end of 2026, with its Google and Broadcom arrangement following in 2027. The orbital compute ambitions outlined in the SpaceX partnership remain longer-term and subject to considerable technical and regulatory development. In the near term, users can expect the changes to Claude Code limits described in Anthropic's May 6 blog post to take effect within the coming weeks as Colossus 1 capacity is brought online.
Whether the potential $900 billion funding round closes — and at what valuation — will be a key data point for the broader AI investment landscape in the months ahead.
The tools reshaping how professionals work — from AI coding assistants to large-scale infrastructure deals — have direct implications for productivity, focus, and how knowledge workers manage their time and cognitive load. At Moccet, we track developments at the intersection of technology and human performance to help you make smarter decisions about how you work. Join the Moccet waitlist to stay ahead of the curve.