Riot Platforms has signed a $9.1 billion, 20-year agreement to lease 191 megawatts of computing capacity at its Rockdale, Texas campus to Anthropic, marking one of the largest infrastructure contracts struck between a bitcoin miner and an AI lab as the cryptocurrency industry pivots toward artificial intelligence.
News Summary
- Riot Platforms signed a $9.1 billion, 20-year compute deal with Anthropic for 191 megawatts at its Rockdale, Texas campus, confirmed on August 11, 2026.
- The contract runs through June 2048 with two optional five-year extensions, potentially raising total value to approximately $16.1 billion.
- Riot now operates a two-tenant campus alongside its existing agreement with AMD, carrying roughly $9.8 billion in contracted data center revenue.
- The deal reflects a broader shift among publicly traded bitcoin miners toward AI infrastructure, driven by depressed cryptocurrency prices, increased competition, and the quadrennial Bitcoin halving.
- Riot shares jumped 25 percent in after-hours trading to $24.40 following the announcement before giving up nearly the entire gain.
The deal, confirmed by CNBC’s David Faber, runs through June 2048 and includes two optional five-year extensions that could raise the total contract value to roughly $16.1 billion. The first 96 megawatts are scheduled to come online by the end of 2027.
From Mining to Landlord
The agreement transforms Riot from a pure-play bitcoin miner into an AI infrastructure landlord. Under the terms, Anthropic gains access to scarce, grid-connected power in a state where the Electric Reliability Council of Texas has been scrutinizing new power projects, tightening the supply of large-scale capacity.
Riot already had an agreement with Advanced Micro Devices at the same campus. Compass Point analyst Michael Donovan wrote in a note on Tuesday that Riot now has a “two-tenant campus carrying $9.8 billion of contracted data center revenue.”
Anthropic has been aggressively securing computing capacity in recent months. In addition to the Riot deal, the company signed a $10 billion agreement with Volta Infra Holdings and, in May, reached a deal to purchase nearly $45 billion worth of computing capacity from Elon Musk’s xAI.
Why Bitcoin Miners Are Pivoting
The miner-to-AI pivot began taking shape during the last sustained crypto downturn in 2022, though it was initially concentrated among smaller operators. With lower bitcoin prices, more competition, and the reduction in mining rewards driven by the quadrennial halving, mining companies have seen profits squeezed. When the price of bitcoin falls below the all-in cost of mining , including electricity, hardware, and operating expenses , operators run at a loss.
Investors have increasingly valued publicly traded miners as owners of digital infrastructure rather than producers of bitcoin. The companies control power capacity, data center assets, and energy contracts that are directly transferable to AI workloads. Bitcoin-miners-turned-AI-infrastructure providers offer exposure to AI demand without requiring a bet on which model or application ultimately wins, because every AI company requires the same scarce resources: power, compute capacity, and physical facilities.
Cipher Mining, Hut 8, and Terawulf are among the operators that have become known as hybrid miners, splitting capacity between cryptocurrency and AI workloads. Riot, along with Mara Holdings and CleanSpark, had largely remained pure-play miners until now.
Market Reaction and Analyst View
Riot shares surged more than 20 percent in after-hours trading following the announcement, reaching $24.40, before retreating during regular trading to give up almost the entire gain. The volatility reflects investor uncertainty about execution risk and the long timeline before the full 191 megawatts come online.
Donovan maintained a Buy rating and $29 price target on Riot, arguing that ERCOT’s increased scrutiny of new power projects would slow speculative developments still navigating the queue but would not reduce tenant demand for large blocks of near-term power. “If anything, the scarcity of greenlit capacity should increase its strategic value,” he wrote.
The deal underscores how the AI build-out is reshaping industries well beyond Silicon Valley. Power and land , assets that bitcoin miners accumulated during the crypto boom , have become some of the most sought-after inputs in the technology sector.