Anthropic Signs $9.1 Billion Cloud Deal with Riot Platforms
Anthropic has signed a twenty-year, $9.1 billion cloud deal with Riot Platforms, a Texas bitcoin miner busily recasting itself as a landlord for artificial intelligence.
August 11, 2026 – 10:01 am
Credit: Anthropic
Anthropic has struck another enormous deal to feed its appetite for computing power, and this time the counterparty is a company that until recently made its money digging up bitcoin. The twenty-year arrangement is worth $9.1 billion and gives the Claude maker a large slab of capacity at a Texas campus that Riot Platforms is converting from crypto mining into rented compute for AI, the latest in a run of vast infrastructure agreements the lab has signed to secure the hardware its models demand.
Deal Details:
- Duration: 20 years with two five-year extension options.
- Value: $9.1 billion headline value, climbing to $16.1 billion if both extensions are taken up.
- Capacity: 191 megawatts of IT capacity at Riot’s Rockdale campus.
- Timeline: 96MW online by December 2027, full 191MW by June 2028.
- Financing: Morgan Stanley providing $573 million in interim financing.
Market Reaction:
Riot’s shares jumped roughly 25% in after-hours trading on August 10, touching around $24.30, reflecting market enthusiasm for AI-tied investments.
Riot Platforms Pivot:
Riot Platforms, with its heritage as a bitcoin miner, is now recasting itself as a property manager for compute. CEO Jason Les notes having executed leases totaling 241 megawatts of capacity with major AI players in the past six months.
Anthropic’s Strategy:
Anthropic has been rapidly securing compute deals, including multi-billion-dollar arrangements with cloud providers and chipmakers. The strategy is to lock down capacity as demand for its models continues to grow. By leasing rather than building its own data centers, Anthropic can focus on developing AI models while leaving infrastructure development to others.