Anthropic Signs $19 Billion TeraWulf Lease Without Naming Hawesville Chips
Anthropic agreed to a $19 billion, 20-year TeraWulf data-centre lease for a 401MW Kentucky campus. TeraWulf disclosed the site, cooling design and investment range, while chip selection and the first capacity tranche remain outside the public record.
Hawesville Campus Carries 401MW Capacity Target
The infrastructure developer announced the lease for a facility being built at a former aluminium smelting site in Hawesville.
The Nasdaq-listed AI infrastructure developer said the 790-acre campus already has power transmission and fibre-optic infrastructure, which the company expects to shorten the buildout compared with projects that need new overhead power lines.
The deal is a direct AI infrastructure financing story rather than a generic cloud expansion.
The presentation put planned Hawesville investment between $3 billion and $4 billion.
Initial Capacity Is Scheduled For The Second Half Of 2027
The company said initial capacity is scheduled for the second half of 2027, but the company did not specify how many megawatts will be available at that stage.
Full operation is planned for the following year, when the campus is due to reach 401 megawatts of computing power.
The staged timetable leaves a gap between a signed lease and delivered AI capacity.
The public record still lacks the first tranche of megawatts, the number of racks, the graphics processors, or the commercial terms that would apply if capacity is delayed.
Chief Executive Paul Prager said the company told investors after the Justified Data campus acquisition in February that it was seeking a major customer commitment around the close of the second quarter of 2026.
He said the Anthropic announcement followed final documentation and customary transaction processes.
Closed-Loop Cooling Is Part Of The Hawesville Design
The company said the Hawesville site will use a closed-loop cooling system for graphics cards inside the data centre.
The company said the system recycles the same cooling liquid instead of drawing water from local reservoirs.
The coolant is described as a mix of water and propylene glycol.
TeraWulf said the liquid circulates through structures behind server racks, absorbs heat from the graphics cards, then moves outside the facility so fans can radiate the heat before the coolant returns to the racks.
The cooling design is part of the large power and compute footprint disclosed for Hawesville.
The disclosures connect the buildout to existing transmission, fibre and a cooling design that avoids reservoir withdrawals, but they do not name the full hardware configuration.
TeraWulf Also Sells Its Texas Stake To Fluidstack
The Anthropic lease was not the only data-centre transaction in the announcement.
The company said it agreed to sell its 50.1% stake in a 168-megawatt AI facility in Abernathy, Texas, to Fluidstack for $450 million.
The two companies had previously teamed up on the Texas facility.
The company said the sale is expected to provide a premium to invested capital.
Last quarter, The infrastructure developer posted $34 million in revenue, which shows the scale difference between its current revenue base and the lease value attached to Hawesville.
The chips planned for Hawesville, first capacity tranche, rack counts, delay penalties and final hardware bill for the 401MW campus remain outside the public record.
