xAI leases Colossus-1 supercluster to Anthropic, signs US pre-release model review deal as Grok downloads plunge

Elon Musk's xAI is reportedly leasing the full compute capacity of its 220K+ NVIDIA-GPU Colossus-1 supercluster to rival Anthropic, and has signed a US-government agreement granting early access to new models for national-security review before public release. WSJ reports Grok is lagging badly — downloads down ~80% — and the Anthropic compute lease is being read as a structural pivot toward a 'compute landlord' model rather than a temporary capacity arbitrage.