Anthropic signs $9.1 billion power deal with Riot

Anthropic has agreed to a 20-year deal worth $9.1 billion with Riot Platforms, a bitcoin miner that has moved into leasing data centre capacity to AI companies. Riot will supply 191 megawatts of capacity from its Rockdale, Texas campus, with an initial 96 megawatts due in December 2027 and full deployment targeted for June 2028. The contract runs through June 2048 and includes two optional five-year extensions that could lift its total value to $16.1 billion.

The agreement is Anthropic's latest move to lock in computing capacity, following a $10 billion deal with infrastructure startup Volta Infra Holdings and other large compute agreements it has signed this year. Riot shares jumped about 25 percent in after-hours trading once the counterparty was confirmed.

Anthropic is increasingly turning to companies built for bitcoin mining rather than traditional cloud providers for power-dense sites, a sign of how scarce grid-connected capacity has become relative to the capital chasing it.