Riot Platforms has signed one of the biggest deals yet in the Bitcoin-miner-to-AI-landlord trade. The company will lease 191 megawatts at its Rockdale, Texas, campus to Anthropic under a 20-year agreement expected to bring in $9.1 billion, rising to about $16.1 billion if Anthropic exercises two five-year extensions, CNBC reported.
Riot itself only named “a leading frontier AI lab.” Bloomberg identified it as Anthropic, according to CoinDesk. Shares jumped more than 20% before the open last Tuesday, then gave back almost all of the gain during the session.
The numbers behind the lease
Deployment starts in December 2027, with the full buildout expected by June 2028. Riot projects the base term will produce $7.3 billion to $8.2 billion in cumulative net operating income. Combined with its existing lease to AMD, contracted AI capacity at Rockdale reaches 241 megawatts. Compass Point analyst Michael Donovan called it a “two-tenant campus carrying $9.8 [billion] of contracted data center revenue.”
Set that against Riot’s current business. Second-quarter revenue rose 14% to $174.2 million, but only $23.2 million came from data centers. Mining revenue fell to $113.7 million as lower bitcoin prices and more network competition outweighed higher output. Riot has been selling its monthly production and cutting its treasury to help fund the buildout, CoinDesk reported, with holdings down 4,300 BTC over the quarter to 11,380.
Why AI labs want miners’ sites
The appeal is power that’s already connected. Miners control big sites with grid connections, land and cooling in place, so they can serve AI customers faster than developers starting from scratch. Anthropic has used the route before, signing a six-year, $10 billion contract with Volta Infra for capacity at a Norwegian site run by miner Bitdeer.
That scarcity may become more valuable in Texas, Donovan argued, as grid operator ERCOT applies closer scrutiny to new projects. “If anything, the scarcity of greenlit capacity should increase its strategic value,” he wrote, keeping a Buy rating and a $29 price target.
The fading stock pop is the caveat. AI-focused miners such as Cipher Mining, TeraWulf and IREN were still more than 40% below their record highs after a sector selloff, CoinDesk noted, despite steady dealmaking. Investors increasingly value these companies on contracted megawatts rather than bitcoin mined, but they want to see those megawatts delivered.
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