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🎬 Google, AI, and $75M. A24 fans will hate this.
Colossus lands a $6.3B compute deal, and DeepMind goes to the movies
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My fellow AI explorers
Mondays hit different when the news cycle drops two stories that completely reframe the AI landscape before lunch.
This week, SpaceX quietly became one of the most important compute landlords in AI, and Google DeepMind made its most surprising bet yet: the indie film studio behind Backrooms and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Oh, and Nvidia decided humanoid robots needed a safety upgrade. Buckle up.
In today’s edition:
🚀 SpaceX's Colossus becomes the AI industry's hottest data center
🎬 Google DeepMind bets $75M on A24 to shape the future of filmmaking
🤖 Nvidia debuts humanoid robot safety software
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Elon Musk
SpaceX signed a jaw-dropping compute deal this week, and it should change how you think about the AI infrastructure race.
Reflection AI, an open-source startup founded by ex-Google DeepMind researchers, just agreed to pay SpaceX $150 million per month for access to Nvidia GB300 chips at the Colossus 2 data center in Memphis. If the deal runs through 2029, that's $6.3 billion in total.
Here's what makes this more than just a big number:
Colossus 2 was originally built to train xAI's Grok, but SpaceX is now selling excess capacity to outside AI companies
Reflection AI is valued at $25 billion and is positioning itself as America's answer to open-source frontier AI, already serving government and Pentagon clients
SpaceX's client list now includes Anthropic, Google, Cursor (which it's also acquiring), and Reflection, essentially making Colossus a commercial cloud platform
The compute constraint is still the defining bottleneck of this era. Anthropic and OpenAI have massive funding, but Nvidia chips don't magically appear. SpaceX has figured out that the real money isn't just in rockets or Starlink; it's in being the one who holds the physical keys to AI scale.
Reflection's pitch is clear: closed model dependence is a geopolitical risk, and open-source is the answer for nations and enterprises that want flexibility. With $150M/month in compute backing that argument, they're finally able to build at the level needed to compete.
🔮 Prediction: SpaceX becomes a top-three AI infrastructure player within 18 months. When Google, Anthropic, Cursor, and a $25B open-source startup are all paying you for compute, you're no longer a rocket company with a side hustle. You're an AI hyperscaler.
AI
This one genuinely surprised me.
Google DeepMind and A24 just announced a joint venture to develop AI filmmaking tools, with Google putting $75 million into the studio as part of the deal. It’s the first time Google has ever taken a stake in a film studio.
Here's the breakdown:
A24 gets DeepMind researchers embedded with its 20-person A24 Labs tech team, currently using AI to generate storyboards and flag production problems.
Google gets real-world feedback from working artists to feed back into its Veo video generation stack, without access to A24's content library.
The tension: Backrooms director Kane Parsons said just last week that AI is "cultural rot." The very filmmaker whose movie made A24's biggest-ever box office ($272M worldwide) is opposed to what his studio just signed up for.
DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis framed it perfectly: "The best way to develop tools that empower artists is to work directly with them." That's the right instinct. Every AI video and image tool built in a lab, away from actual directors and cinematographers, shows it.
But there's a genuine tension at the heart of this deal.
A24's brand is built on trusting filmmakers. Its fanbase skews young and culturally skeptical of AI. And yet, here it is, taking Google's money to build the exact workflows that will reshape how films get made.
Between Martin Scorsese partnering with an AI startup for storyboarding and now A24 making this call, the film industry is already showing signs of a major evolution, come what may.
🔮 Prediction: This deal quietly becomes the template for how AI enters Hollywood. Not through lawsuits or hostile licensing grabs, but through studios like A24 that get a seat at the table early and shape the tools in their favor. The studios that wait will get the tools built without them.
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Other Relevant AI News!
🤖 Nvidia just debuted new humanoid robot safety software designed to let machines operate safely alongside humans in real environments, a critical missing piece for industrial robotics deployment.
🧠 Pew Research published a landmark study on AI in mental healthcare, finding both significant clinical opportunities and serious risks as AI tools enter therapy and diagnosis workflows.
📰 Germany is grappling with a major AI journalism scandal after outlets were caught using AI-generated content without disclosure, reigniting the global debate on transparency in media.
💊 Prosper AI raised $30 million to automate the patient journey end-to-end, from intake to billing, aiming to fix one of healthcare's most broken administrative problems.
Golden Nuggets
🚀 SpaceX's Colossus is quietly becoming the most important AI compute platform nobody is talking about
🎬 Google's A24 bet is the cleanest signal yet that AI's next frontier is creative industries, not just enterprise software
💡 The real AI infrastructure story isn't who has the best model. It's who controls the chips those models run on
Would love to hear your thoughts! Send me your thoughts by replying to this email (yes, I read them all :)
Until our next AI rendezvous,
Anthony | Founder of Uncover AI