- Bloomberg reported that Anthropic signed a 20-year lease for 191 megawatts at Riot’s Rockdale, Texas, campus. [1] - The reported base value is $9.1 billion, with extension options that could lift the total to $16.1 billion. [1] - The first 96 megawatts are scheduled to come online in December 2027, with the remaining capacity planned for June 2028. [1] - Riot is expected to build and operate the facility; Anthropic would supply its own servers and AI chips.
[1] Anthropic has reportedly signed a $9.1 billion lease for 191 megawatts of data-center capacity from Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms, linking the AI company to a planned facility at Riot’s Rockdale, Texas, campus. Bloomberg reported the agreement, citing people familiar with the matter. [1]
Riot disclosed the existence of the contract alongside its earnings on Monday, August 10, 2026, but did not identify the tenant. The company described the customer as a “leading frontier AI lab.” [1]
A 20-year contract with phased delivery #
The reported agreement has a 20-year term and a base value of $9.1 billion. Two extension options could raise the potential total value to $16.1 billion, although that figure depends on the options being exercised. [1]
The first 96 megawatts are scheduled to go live in December 2027. The remaining 95 megawatts are planned for June 2028, implying a phased buildout rather than a single delivery date. [1]
Riot would build the data center to the customer’s specifications and provide the building, power connections, cooling and operations. Anthropic would bring its own servers and AI chips. [1]
The 191-megawatt figure describes contracted facility capacity, not a disclosed quantity of installed AI accelerators or a measure of Anthropic’s eventual model-training or inference output.
What Riot has disclosed — and what remains unclear #
Riot’s public materials describe the company as a digital-infrastructure operator with businesses spanning Bitcoin mining, engineering and large-scale data-center development. Its investor-relations site lists data-center development as part of the company’s strategy. [2]
The available public account does not identify the facility’s power source, a dedicated power-purchase agreement, the expected construction cost or the financing structure for the buildout. It also does not specify whether Riot or Anthropic would own particular portions of the completed infrastructure. [1][2]
The source material reviewed does not identify a new permit, grid-interconnection approval or other transaction-specific regulatory milestone. That does not establish that no approvals are required; it means the details were not disclosed in the materials reviewed for this report.
The agreement appears to be a commercial lease and infrastructure buildout rather than a conventional cloud contract. Riot would provide the physical facility and operating services, while Anthropic would supply the compute hardware. The distinction matters because the reported headline value does not by itself establish how much capital Anthropic will spend on servers and accelerators. [1]
No public comments from Anthropic identified #
The source account does not include an attributed statement from Anthropic. Riot’s only description in the available material is that the customer is a leading frontier AI lab. [1]
The deal adds to Anthropic’s reported infrastructure commitments across cloud, chip and data-center partners, but the materials reviewed do not establish how the Riot capacity will be divided among training, inference or other workloads. [1]
Riot’s investor-relations page lists current earnings and data-center announcements, but the specific Anthropic identification and transaction terms in this report come from Bloomberg’s account as relayed by The Decoder, not from an Anthropic announcement. [1][2]
Companies mentioned #
Further sources #
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