Riot Signs $9.1 Billion Anthropic Deal as Bitcoin Miners Pivot to AI Capacity

Riot Platforms has moved deeper into AI infrastructure with a 20-year Anthropic compute agreement expected to generate $9.1 billion in revenue, CNBC's David Faber confirmed.

The deal changes the centre of gravity for one of the public bitcoin-mining sector's larger names.

Under the agreement, 191 megawatts at Riot's Rockdale, Texas, computer campus would be leased to Anthropic, giving the AI company access to grid-connected power as data-centre capacity tightens.

For Riot, the arrangement turns mining infrastructure into a long-duration landlord-style contract rather than a business tied only to mined bitcoin output.

The base economics are large enough to recast the campus.

Expected revenue stands at $9.1 billion across the 20-year term and could rise to about $16.1 billion if two additional five-year extension periods are used.

Compass Point analyst Michael Donovan wrote in a Tuesday note that Riot now has a two-tenant campus carrying $9.8 billion of contracted data-centre revenue after adding the Anthropic agreement to its existing Advanced Micro Devices arrangement.

Investors initially treated the deal as a proof point for the miner-to-infrastructure pivot.

Riot shares rose more than 20% after the agreement emerged, then surrendered nearly all of the gain.

The reaction captured the split in the trade: AI demand may create higher-value uses for mining campuses, but the market is still testing how durable those contracts are and how much execution risk remains.

The sector backdrop explains why the pivot is accelerating.

Publicly traded bitcoin miners were once valued mainly as leveraged exposure to bitcoin.

With AI demand rising and cryptocurrency prices in a prolonged slump, more of those companies are being assessed as owners of power capacity, data-centre assets and energy contracts.

That shift began after crypto prices tumbled in 2022, especially among smaller miners exposed to periods when bitcoin prices fell below the all-in cost of mining.

The result is a stronger incentive to turn power contracts and campuses toward customers that pay for compute capacity rather than block rewards.

AI infrastructure offers a different revenue profile, but it also changes what investors have to judge.

Instead of only modelling hash rate, bitcoin price and electricity cost, the Riot agreement puts power availability, tenant commitments, campus conversion and contract duration at the centre of the story.

Buildout timing is still unresolved.

Riot has a headline AI customer and a multibillion-dollar revenue line attached to Rockdale, but the disclosed terms did not set out the final capacity-conversion milestones or the timing for extension decisions.