Anthropic, the maker of Claude AI, has signed a $9.1 billion computing deal with Riot Platforms, a Bitcoin mining company now moving into AI infrastructure.
The agreement supplies 191 megawatts of computing power through June 2048 and reflects Anthropic's aggressive efforts to secure enough data center capacity to meet surging customer demand.
The deal is one of several major infrastructure commitments Anthropic has made recently, highlighting the critical importance of computing power in the competitive AI market.
What happened
Anthropic has signed a $9.1 billion deal with Riot Platforms, a Bitcoin mining company that recently began offering AI data center capacity. The agreement runs through June 2048 and supplies 191 megawatts of computing power from Riot's Rockdale, Texas campus.
Why it matters
Anthropic has struggled to keep up with customer demand for AI tools and has secured multiple computing deals in recent months—including a $10 billion agreement with Volta Infra Holdings and a commitment to buy nearly $45 billion worth of computing from xAI in May. The Riot deal shows the intensity of competition for data center capacity as AI companies vie for the infrastructure needed to scale.
What to watch
The Riot deal includes options to extend the contract twice by five years each, which could bring total sales to as much as $16.1 billion. Riot's shares jumped 25% to $24.40 on news of the agreement.
Anthropic PBC has secured a $9.1 billion computing supply agreement with Riot Platforms Inc., a Bitcoin mining company that recently began offering AI data center capacity. Riot disclosed the deal on Monday, revealing that it had secured a 20-year agreement to supply 191 megawatts of computing power—sufficient to power roughly 143,000 homes at any given moment—from its Rockdale, Texas campus to a major frontier AI developer. People familiar with the matter confirmed that the AI company in question is Anthropic.
The agreement runs through June 2048 and includes two five-year extension options, which could increase the total contract value to as much as $16.1 billion. Riot Platforms expects the deal to generate $9.1 billion in revenue over the base term. On news of the agreement, Riot's shares jumped 25% to $24.40 in late trading on Monday.
The Riot deal is the latest in a string of major computing commitments Anthropic has made in recent months. The AI developer recently signed a $10 billion deal with Volta Infra Holdings Ltd., a months-old infrastructure startup, and agreed in May to purchase nearly $45 billion worth of computing from Elon Musk's xAI. These multiple agreements underscore Anthropic's challenges in keeping pace with customer demand for its AI tools and its need to secure sufficient computing infrastructure to support growth.
Riot Platforms, which previously operated as a biotech diagnostic machinery maker under the name Bioptix before pivoting dramatically to Bitcoin mining, is one of several cryptocurrency firms now moving into cloud computing to capitalize on the AI boom. The company has also announced a separate deal with Advanced Micro Devices Inc. to build computing capacity. Riot beat on sales in the second quarter in part because of its data center business.
Anthropic's $9.1 billion agreement with Riot Platforms is part of a broader scramble by leading AI companies to secure the data center infrastructure necessary to power their operations at scale. In recent months, Anthropic has announced multiple major computing commitments—the $10 billion Volta Infra deal and the nearly $45 billion xAI purchase—indicating that securing reliable computing capacity has become a central business priority. The deals reflect a structural challenge in the AI market: the explosive growth in customer demand for AI tools has outpaced the availability of the specialized hardware and power infrastructure needed to run large language models.
Riot Platforms' entry into AI data center provisioning is emblematic of a broader trend in which cryptocurrency-related firms are pivoting toward cloud computing to capitalize on the AI boom. The company, which shifted from biotech diagnostics into Bitcoin mining and is now building out AI infrastructure, sees the opportunity to monetize its existing data center expertise and power access. The deal's structure—a long-term commitment through 2048 with extension options—signals confidence from both parties in sustained, growing demand for AI computing resources over decades.
AI-summarized, only the topics you pick — one digest a day via Email, Slack, or Discord.
Free · takes 30 seconds · unsubscribe anytime
Ask AI anything about this article. Q&As are published on this page for other readers too.
Amazon and Google are intensifying competitive efforts against The Trade Desk (TTD), a major digital advertisi…
QumulusAI announced a GPU-as-a-Service agreement with DRW, a global trading firm, to supply a dedicated NVIDIA…
OpenAI introduced Premium Seats for ChatGPT Business, priced at $125 per user per month ($100 with annual bill…
Computer scientists at University of Tübingen, Max Planck Institute, MATS Research, and Snyk discovered a meth…
Anthropic pledged to embed machine-readable watermarks in Claude-generated text and digitally signed provenanc…
OpenAI announced that its unreleased model Astra had produced solutions to 10 long-standing mathematics proble…
The AI news that matters, in one minute each morning.
Sign up free