The 20-year lease is projected to average $457 million a year, while Riot's fully costed bitcoin mining ran at 126.5% of the value of the coins it produced last quarter.
Riot Platforms has leased 191 megawatts of computing capacity at its Rockdale, Texas, bitcoin mining campus to an unnamed artificial intelligence company under a 20-year agreement the miner says will generate roughly $9.1 billion in revenue, according to an exhibit filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Aug. 10. The lease runs through June 2048 and includes two five-year extension options that would lift its total potential value to about $16.1 billion if exercised.
Riot identified the tenant only as "one of the world's leading frontier AI labs." The company expects the contract to average $457 million of revenue a year — four times the $113.7 million its bitcoin mining business produced in the entire second quarter, a figure that fell from $140.9 million a year earlier.
The economics of that mining business explain the trade. Riot disclosed that its cost to mine one bitcoin, excluding depreciation, was $49,912 in the second quarter against a production value of $71,667 per coin. Once miner depreciation is included, the cost rises to $90,631 — 126.5% of what the mined bitcoin was worth. Total revenue of $174.2 million was up 14% year over year, helped by $23.2 million of data center revenue, but Riot still posted a net loss of $237.2 million and adjusted EBITDA of negative $69.7 million.
The lease does not start paying for more than a year. Riot expects to deliver the first 96 IT megawatts in December 2027 and the full 191 by June 2028, using the campus's existing, fully approved grid interconnection. The buildout carries expected capital expenditures of $2.1 billion to $2.3 billion, against estimated cumulative net operating income of $7.3 billion to $8.2 billion over the base term, or $365 million to $411 million a year. Those revenue, NOI and contract-value numbers are Riot's own forward-looking estimates.
