Anthropic has entered into a cloud agreement worth $9.1 billion over 20 years with bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms.

      Anthropic has secured another significant deal to satisfy its need for computing power, this time partnering with a company that until recently was focused on bitcoin mining. The two-decade agreement, valued at $9.1 billion, grants the developer of Claude a substantial portion of capacity at a Texas facility that Riot Platforms is actively transforming from crypto mining into rented computing for AI. This marks the latest in a series of extensive infrastructure agreements that the lab has made to obtain the hardware necessary for its models.

      The contract extends until June 2048 and includes options for two five-year extensions, potentially raising the total value to $16.1 billion. This arrangement resembles more of a long-term partnership between a pioneering AI lab and a former miner than a simple lease. In return for their investment, Anthropic will receive 191 megawatts of IT capacity at Riot's Rockdale facility, delivered in phases rather than all at once. Riot anticipates that 96 MW will be operational by December 2027, with the entire 191 MW available by June 2028, assuming the current rapid pace of data center construction in Texas continues.

      To facilitate this, Riot is seeking support from Wall Street. Morgan Stanley is supplying $573 million in interim financing to cover development costs for the site, a type of upfront borrowing that has become common as the power demands of AI outpace available funds for companies eager to meet these challenges.

      Investors responded positively, and Riot's stock rose approximately 25% in after-hours trading on August 10, reaching around $24.30. This reaction reflects not just the specifics of the contract but also the market's enthusiasm for anything associated with AI. A dependable twenty-year stream of payments from a financially strong customer is certainly a more stable venture compared to the fluctuating price of bitcoin.

      The leasing party is an unexpected choice. Riot Platforms, originally a bitcoin miner with a strong track record—having mined 1,587 bitcoins in the second quarter of 2026—is now repositioning itself as a provider of computing resources. CEO Jason Les noted that the company has "signed leases for a total of 241 megawatts of capacity, representing about $9.8 billion in long-term, contracted revenue" with prominent AI companies within just six months.

      This shift is not exclusive to Riot. Several former bitcoin miners have realized that the extensive, power-intensive facilities they constructed for mining are ideally suited for training and running AI models. As a result, they are rapidly re-letting that capacity to those willing to pay for it.

      For Anthropic, the strategy is clear, albeit somewhat overwhelming. The company has been securing compute agreements at a pace that would have seemed unbelievable just a few years ago, establishing multi-billion-dollar contracts with cloud providers, chip manufacturers, and now crypto miners, all to ensure it has the capacity available before competitors do.

      The demand for Anthropic's models continues to rise, and the only solution is to keep purchasing, leasing, and reserving silicon wherever it can be located, including in the repurposed facilities of a cryptocurrency operation.

      There is a striking irony in this situation: the energy that was once dedicated to creating digital currencies is now being redirected to generating digital intelligence, and the same warehouses filled with operating machines now serve a new purpose. However, whether the economics of these twenty-year commitments will still seem wise in 2048, after the current wave of enthusiasm has faded, is a question that those signing the contracts seem unwilling to address promptly.