Bloomberg, citing informed sources, reported that Anthropic has finalized a long-term cloud computing contract worth $9.1 billion with Bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms, with a term of 20 years. This is not an isolated transaction but one of several large-scale capacity procurement agreements that Anthropic has recently signed, reflecting the ongoing pressure on the capacity supply side for AI companies.
After the announcement, Riot's stock surged 25% in after-hours trading, reaching $24.40. The contract covers 191 megawatts of computing power, equivalent to powering about 143,000 households at the same time. The computing power comes from Riot's data center campus in Rockdale, Texas. If both parties exercise the two five-year extension options included in the contract, the total value could reach as high as $16.1 billion, with the agreement lasting until June 2048.
Even more impressive is the comparison. Prior to this, Anthropic had already signed a $10 billion cloud computing agreement with Volta Infra Holdings, a infrastructure startup that had only been established for a few months; in May of this year, it also reached an agreement with xAI, Elon Musk's company, committing to purchase nearly $45 billion in computing resources. Together, these three agreements exceed $60 billion, revealing the aggressive approach of the developer of Claude in purchasing computing power.
