Anthropic struck a $9.1 billion deal with bitcoin miner Riot Platforms for AI computing qz.com
Riot plans to bring capacity online in stages, reaching 96 megawatts by December 2027 and completing the full 191-megawatt buildout by June 2028, the company said. To fund the project's early construction phase, Riot arranged a $573 million interim financing facility through Morgan Stanley $MS as it works toward putting a permanent credit backstop in place.
Riot CEO Jason Les said in a statement that the two agreements together bring the company's total signed capacity to 241 megawatts and roughly $9.8 billion in long-term contracted revenue, all accumulated within six months. The earlier deal was with Advanced Micro Devices.
Riot stock closed down 5.46% on Monday before the deal was announced, then surged more than 25% in after-hours trading.
The Anthropic deal was announced alongside Riot's second-quarter financial results, which showed revenue growth alongside a wider net loss. Total revenue for the three months ended June 30 came in at $174.2 million, up 14% from $153 million a year earlier. Bitcoin mining contributed $113.7 million, while data center revenue was $23.2 million. That compares with net income of $219.5 million, or $0.58 per share, in the year-ago quarter; this quarter Riot swung to a net loss of $237.2 million, or $0.68 per diluted share.
Anthropic has been pursuing a series of large computing agreements as demand for its products grows. The company signed a $10 billion, six-year deal with Volta Infra Holdings, a months-old AI infrastructure startup backed by Nvidia $NVDA, to use capacity at a data center in Norway. Anthropic also agreed to buy nearly $45 billion worth of computing from Elon Musk's xAI in May, according to Bloomberg. Earlier arrangements have included deals with SpaceX, AMD $AMD, and Akamai $AKAM Technologies.
Riot's path to data centers is an unlikely one: the company spent years in biotech diagnostics under the Bioptix name before reinventing itself as a bitcoin miner, and it is now part of a broader wave of crypto companies chasing AI infrastructure revenue.
The essential business news, delivered fresh every morning.
Join 500,000+ readers who start their day with Quartz.
By subscribing, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
Future of Work