2026-05-07

Colossus 1

this is a reminder that frontier-model competition is now deeply entangled with opaque infrastructure, environmental politics, and supplier leverage, not just model benchmarks.

Original source

Reading Log X Post Historical Backfill Security LLM Research

Imported from historical reading log.

  • Extracted Simon Willison's post via api.fxtwitter.com fallback and checked the linked note Notes on the xAI/Anthropic data center deal.
  • Simon's main clarification is that Anthropic is getting Colossus 1, while xAI keeps using the larger Colossus 2; early chatter that xAI had given up its own compute was wrong.
  • The sharper points are around externalities and dependency risk: Colossus 1 reportedly has a particularly bad environmental record, and the deal effectively makes Anthropic dependent on infrastructure controlled by Elon/xAI with an explicit we reserve the right to reclaim the compute caveat.
  • He also notes xAI had just given customers only two weeks' notice before shutting down several older models, which makes the supply-side relationship feel even shakier.
  • Why it matters: this is a reminder that frontier-model competition is now deeply entangled with opaque infrastructure, environmental politics, and supplier leverage, not just model benchmarks.
  • Good angle: AI labs are accumulating supply-chain risk that looks a lot more like cloud/geopolitics than pure software.