Igeekphone News: July 10 — Elon Musk has publicly acknowledged that he underestimated AI startup Anthropic, praising the company as a leader in artificial intelligence while pledging not to use his businesses’ infrastructure to undermine a competitor.
In a series of posts on X, Musk said he had “clearly been wrong” about Anthropic’s prospects, marking a notable shift from comments he made last year that dismissed the company’s chances of becoming a dominant player in the AI industry.
The discussion began after an X user pointed out that SpaceX, through its growing AI infrastructure business, provides computing capacity to Anthropic. The user suggested that Musk could theoretically damage Anthropic’s business by withdrawing access to those servers.
The comment referenced Musk’s statement from September last year, when he said, “Victory is never within the realm of Anthropic’s possible outcomes.”
Now, however, Musk has taken a markedly different position.
“Clearly, I was wrong about Anthropic,” Musk wrote.
He went on to describe Anthropic as the current leader in the AI industry, adding that no other company has released a model matching the quality of Mythos/Fable, and predicting that Anthropic’s next-generation Mythos 2 model would likely arrive in the near future.
Musk also emphasized that competition should not involve using control over critical infrastructure to disadvantage rivals.
“Even though they are a competitor, I would never cut off their services in a way that would seriously harm them. That’s not how I do business,” he said.
To illustrate his point, Musk cited examples from his other companies. He noted that Tesla made many of its electric vehicle patents publicly available and later opened its Supercharger network to competing automakers. He also said SpaceX competes by building better products rather than restricting competitors through pricing or unfair contractual practices.
The remarks come as Anthropic continues its rapid rise in the global AI industry. As of July 2026, the company has become one of SpaceX’s largest AI infrastructure customers, reflecting the growing demand for high-performance computing resources as AI models become increasingly complex.
Musk’s latest comments highlight the evolving competitive landscape in artificial intelligence. While companies continue to compete aggressively on model performance and innovation, his remarks suggest that competition should be driven by technological advancement rather than by restricting access to essential infrastructure.
The exchange also underscores how quickly perceptions can change in the AI sector, where breakthroughs in large language models and reasoning systems have reshaped the industry’s competitive hierarchy in just a few years.