Elon Musk admits he was wrong about Anthropic and calls it the AI leader

Elon Musk says he was “clearly wrong” about Anthropic.

On July 9, 2026, he posted on X: “They are obviously currently the leader in AI. No company has released a model as good as Mythos/Fable and they will undoubtedly have Mythos 2 ready soon.”

A total reversal

The distance between this and Musk’s previous position could not be wider. In February 2026, he called Claude models “misanthropic and evil” and accused Anthropic of stealing training data at massive scale, as reported by TechCrunch and TheStreet.

Five months later, the same voice calls the same company the obvious leader in AI, and volunteers a prediction that its next model will arrive soon. Public reversals this complete are rare from anyone in tech, and rarer still from Musk, who does not usually walk back attacks on competitors.

The Colossus connection

The business relationship underneath the compliment makes it more interesting. Anthropic leases the full capacity of SpaceX’s Colossus 1 supercomputer in Memphis, reportedly around $1.25 billion a month through 2029.

That arrangement gives Musk real leverage over his competitor: his company is landlord to the compute Anthropic runs on. He addressed the tension directly, saying he would never cut them off “in a way that hurt them badly, even as a competitor.”

So the fiercest critic became, simultaneously, the landlord, the competitor, and now the public admirer. Reportedly $15 billion a year in lease revenue has a way of complicating a feud.

A data point, whatever the motive

Is the praise genuine respect or strategic positioning? With Musk, the answer is usually not either-or. But the statement stands on its own terms: when the person who called your models evil five months ago publicly declares you the leader in AI, that is a data point about where the race actually stands.

The next test arrives whenever Mythos 2 does. Musk has now publicly bet that it is coming soon, and that it will be worth the wait.