Bitcoin Miner Riot Platforms Enters $9 Billion AI Infrastructure Deal With Anthropic: Report

In a press release issued Monday, Bitcoin mining firm Riot Platforms announced that it entered into a 20-year agreement to provide 191 megawatts of electricity from its Rockdale, Texas, facility to a leading frontier AI firm, Anthropic. The deal has an estimated value of $9 billion (roughly Rs. 85,806 crore), according to Bloomberg reports on Monday from sources close to the deal. The transaction would see Riot join the likes of Bitdeer, CleanSpark, MARA Holdings, Core Scientific, Hut 8 and IREN in the space of Bitcoin mining firms venturing into AI and high-performance computing.

Bitcoin Miners Turn to AI as Long-Term Power Deals Offer Stable Revenue

As per the report, Riot, which was once dedicated to mining Bitcoin, serves as an example of how the entire industry has switched its focus to AI hardware, with long-term leases bringing more stable income to companies than block approvals in Bitcoin do. The miners have access to large-scale facilities with preexisting grid connections, land, and cooling facilities, enabling them to deliver their services to hungry-for-power AI companies more quickly than those who have started building their facilities from scratch. Anthropic also just struck a deal worth $10 billion (roughly Rs. 95,340 crore) over six years with Volta Infra, using Bitdeer's bitcoin-mining facility in Norway.

The rollout of the Riot sites is set for December 2027, and the complete build-out will be completed by June 2028. Two potential five-year extensions will boost total revenues to $16.1 billion (roughly Rs. 1,53,497 crore). The total net operating income over the base term is expected to range between $7.3 billion (roughly Rs. 69,598 crore) and $8.2 billion (roughly Rs. 78,179 crore). 

The deal comes after Riot rents chip-maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), with total contracted power for AI operations at Rockdale now standing at 241 megawatts. Riot initially supplied 25 megawatts in the second quarter and is building another 25 megawatts.

The shares of Riot came down by 5.4 percent last Monday but have gained more than 21 percent after this announcement. Year to date, the stock has risen by more than 53 percent, says Yahoo Finance data. Riot is also the fourth-largest Bitcoin miner globally with a market cap of $7.3 billion (roughly Rs. 69,598 crore), according to CompaniesMarketCap data. 

The company is also financing its data center investment through the monthly sale of Bitcoin mining and decreasing its treasury. Riot's total treasury has decreased from 15,680 BTC to 11,380 BTC at the end of the quarter, a decrease of 4,300 BTC.

Last week, a report by Cointelegraph released a statement by Bernstein that said it still leans towards the Bitcoin mining industry because of the increasing partnerships between Bitcoin mining firms, which are essential to solve the power limitations of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers. According to the investment manager's Bitcoin mining industry deal tracker, there was one AI-related deal every week in July, with the total number of deals reaching more than 7.5 gigawatts or the contractual value of $150 billion (roughly Rs. 14,30,100 crore) worth of multiyear contracts.