Anthropic signs $9.1 billion data center deal with Riot Platforms

Anthropic signs $9.1 billion data center deal with Riot Platforms

Tue, August 11, 2026 at 2:37 PM GMT+3 2 min read

• RIOT -5.46%
• BTC-USD -0.59%

Anthropic has struck a $9.1 billion agreement with Riot Platforms, a bitcoin mining company that has been building out AI data center capacity, according to Bloomberg.

Riot disclosed the deal on Monday, describing the counterparty only as a "leading frontier AI lab." Riot's Rockdale, Texas, campus will supply 191 megawatts of IT capacity under the terms of the 20-year lease, which extends through June 2048, the company said. Two five-year extension options could raise the total contract value to $16.1 billion.

Riot plans to bring capacity online in stages, reaching 96 megawatts by December 2027 and completing the full 191-megawatt buildout by June 2028, the company said. To fund the project's early construction phase, Riot arranged a $573 million interim financing facility through Morgan Stanley as it works toward putting a permanent credit backstop in place.

Riot CEO Jason Les said in a statement that the two agreements together bring the company's total signed capacity to 241 megawatts and roughly $9.8 billion in long-term contracted revenue, all accumulated within six months. The earlier deal was with Advanced Micro Devices.

Riot stock closed down 5.46% on Monday before the deal was announced, then surged more than 25% in after-hours trading.

The Anthropic deal was announced alongside Riot's second-quarter financial results, which showed revenue growth alongside a wider net loss. Total revenue for the three months ended June 30 came in at $174.2 million, up 14% from $153 million a year earlier. Bitcoin mining contributed $113.7 million, while data center revenue was $23.2 million. That compares with net income of $219.5 million, or $0.58 per share, in the year-ago quarter; this quarter Riot swung to a net loss of $237.2 million, or $0.68 per diluted share.

Anthropic has been pursuing a series of large computing agreements as demand for its products grows. The company signed a $10 billion, six-year deal with Volta Infra Holdings, a months-old AI infrastructure startup backed by Nvidia, to use capacity at a data center in Norway. Anthropic also agreed to buy nearly $45 billion worth of computing from Elon Musk's xAI in May, according to Bloomberg. Earlier arrangements have included deals with SpaceX, AMD, and Akamai Technologies.

Riot's path to data centers is an unlikely one: the company spent years in biotech diagnostics under the Bioptix name before reinventing itself as a bitcoin miner, and it is now part of a broader wave of crypto companies chasing AI infrastructure revenue.