Anthropic, an AI safety and research company, has reportedly agreed to a 20 year, US$ 9.1 billion deal with Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms for computing capacity at Riot’s data center campus in Rockdale, Texas.
While neither company has made any official statement, Riot disclosed the agreement on Aug 10, identifying its customer only as a “leading frontier AI” company. Consequently, Riot’s shares rose 25 percent to US$ 24.40 in late trading after the announcement.
According to a report by The Business Times, Riot will supply 191 MW of computing capacity from its Rockdale campus through June 2048 under the agreement. Riot reportedly expects the contract to generate US$ 9.1 billion in revenue over that period and includes two options to extend the contract by five years each. If both are exercised, the deal could generate as much as US$ 16.1 billion in total sales for Riot.
The transaction gives Anthropic long-term access to substantial computing capacity while providing Riot with a contracted customer for its data center infrastructure for more than two decades. The arrangement also supports Anthropic’s efforts to scale its AI services in response to growing customer demand.
Riot is now among a group of cryptocurrency miners seeking to repurpose their power and data center infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, where demand for computing capacity has surged.
This latest agreement gives Riot a long-term customer for capacity at its Rockdale site as it expands beyond cryptocurrency mining. The company was previously known as Bioptix and made diagnostic equipment for the biotechnology industry before shifting its business to Bitcoin mining.