- Riot disclosed a signed 20-year lease for 191 megawatts of critical IT capacity at Rockdale, with approximately $9.1 billion of expected initial-term contract revenue. [1] - The first 96 megawatts are targeted for December 2027 and the full 191 megawatts for June 2028. Riot said Morgan Stanley is providing a $573 million interim financing facility. [1] - Riot did not name the tenant. CNBC and Cinco Días identified it as Anthropic, but Anthropic had not publicly confirmed the agreement in the company newsroom reviewed on August 12. [2][3][4] - The $9.1 billion figure is a 20-year contract-value estimate, not current revenue. Riot did not disclose a detailed billing or revenue-recognition schedule for the new lease.
[1] Riot Platforms has signed a 20-year lease for 191 megawatts of critical IT capacity at its Rockdale, Texas, campus, a contract the bitcoin miner expects to generate approximately $9.1 billion in revenue over the initial term. [1]
Riot’s August 10 announcement describes the customer only as “one of the world’s leading frontier AI labs.” CNBC and Cinco Días reported that the tenant is Anthropic, but Riot did not name Anthropic and Anthropic had not issued a matching public announcement reviewed by MLQ as of August 12, 2026. [2][3][4]
A signed contract, with delivery still ahead #
The agreement covers a build-to-suit Tier 3 data center at Riot’s Rockdale campus. The initial term runs through June 2048, and the tenant has two five-year extension options. If both options are exercised, Riot estimates total potential contract value of approximately $16.1 billion. [1]
Riot expects to deliver the first 96 IT megawatts in December 2027 and the full 191 megawatts by June 2028. The company says the project will use Rockdale’s existing, fully approved interconnection. That removes a major interconnection hurdle, but the project still depends on construction, equipment procurement, cooling, commissioning and tenant deployment. [1]
Riot estimates cumulative net operating income of $7.3 billion to $8.2 billion over the base term, equivalent to an average annual contribution of $365 million to $411 million. Those are management estimates, not reported earnings, and depend on the project being delivered and operated as planned. [1]
Financing is partly arranged, not fully disclosed #
Riot said Morgan Stanley is providing a $573 million interim financing facility for initial development costs while an investment-grade credit backstop is finalized. The release does not disclose the facility’s interest rate, maturity, security package or the terms of the permanent financing. [1]
The contract value is spread across two decades, with full deployment not expected until June 2028. Riot did not publish a year-by-year billing schedule, minimum-payment schedule or detailed revenue-recognition treatment for the new lease. The company’s release therefore supports describing $9.1 billion as expected total contract revenue, not as booked or near-term revenue. [1]
Riot’s second-quarter results show the data-center business is still in an early delivery phase. The segment generated $23.2 million in revenue, including $4.9 million in operating-lease revenue and $18.3 million in tenant fit-out services revenue. [1]
Anthropic identification remains externally reported #
Riot’s public release identifies the customer only as a frontier AI lab. CNBC reported that sources identified Anthropic as the counterparty, while Cinco Días also described the agreement as an Anthropic deal. Those reports make Anthropic the reported tenant, but they do not constitute a public confirmation from Anthropic itself. [2][4]
Anthropic’s public newsroom, reviewed on August 12, listed other announcements and partnerships but no Riot Platforms announcement. Anthropic has separately announced large compute commitments with Amazon and a deal to use CoreWeave capacity, making a need for additional external compute commercially plausible, but those agreements do not verify the Riot transaction. [3][5][6]
The missing commercial terms are material. Riot has not disclosed payment guarantees, termination rights, take-or-pay provisions, collateral or other protections attached to the new lease. Until those terms are available, the contract’s headline value should be treated as a long-term estimate subject to execution and counterparty risk. [1]
Riot is adding AI capacity alongside mining #
Riot completed the initial 25 megawatts of a separate AMD deployment during the quarter and has another 25 megawatts under construction. Including the new Rockdale lease, Riot says it has contracted 241 megawatts of critical IT capacity and approximately $9.8 billion of long-term contracted revenue with AMD and the unnamed frontier AI lab. [1]
The company reported second-quarter revenue of $174.2 million, including $113.7 million from bitcoin mining and $23.2 million from data centers. It ended June with $548.9 million in cash, including $77.5 million of restricted cash, and more than $1.2 billion in liquid assets when bitcoin holdings are included. [1]
The Rockdale agreement gives Riot a substantial long-duration customer commitment, but its financial impact will be realized in stages. The next major milestones are financing completion, initial construction and the planned December 2027 delivery of 96 megawatts. [1]
Companies mentioned #
Further sources #
[1] Riot Platforms’ August 10, 2026 second-quarter results release disclosed the si… ↗
[[2] CNBC reported that Riot’s unnamed frontier AI laboratory tenant was Anthropic a… ↗](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/11/riot-platforms-signs-anthropic-deal-as-miners-shift-to-ai-infrastructure-.html)
[[3] Anthropic’s public newsroom, reviewed on August 12, 2026, did not list a Riot P… ↗](https://www.anthropic.com/news)
[4] Cinco Días independently reported that Anthropic had signed a 20-year agreement… ↗
[5] Anthropic announced an expanded collaboration with Amazon involving up to 5 gig… ↗ [6] Bloomberg reported that Anthropic agreed to use CoreWeave’s AI capacity for Cla… ↗
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