Author: Jae, PANews
In the heat wave at the Rockdale Park in Texas, the factory once filled with the roar of tens of thousands of Bitcoin mining machines is undergoing a profound asset reshaping.
According to Bloomberg, AI company Anthropic has signed a 20-year super computing power hosting agreement with Bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms, worth up to $9.1 billion. In response to this news, Riot's stock price surged over 25% in after-hours trading.
The computing power arms race among AI giants has also pulled former crypto mining companies into the spotlight.
The computing power race enters deep water, Anthropic locks in electricity with long-term leasing
On August 11, Anthropic reached an AI data center (AIDC) computing power agreement worth $9.1 billion with Bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms to meet the growing computing power demand from Claude users. Riot stated it will provide 191 megawatts of power, enough to power approximately 143,000 households simultaneously, with a contract term of 20 years.
According to SEC filings, the computing power collaboration between Anthropic and Riot won’t go live immediately: the first batch of 96 megawatts is expected to be delivered in December of next year, and the full capacity deployment is scheduled for June 2028.
In the arms race among top AI labs, certainty in computing power supply has become a lifeline for large model manufacturers. The demand for computing power for model training and inference is increasing exponentially, and the capacity and scheduling ability of a single cloud vendor are gradually becoming insufficient to meet their requirements.
To avoid being choked by upstream suppliers while controlling long-term costs, Anthropic is weaving a global "light asset, long cycle" infrastructure network: instead of building data centers personally, it is locking in power, land, and computing power in advance through customized long-term lease agreements of 15-20 years.
In recent years, apart from collaborating with public cloud providers like AWS and Google Cloud, Anthropic’s infrastructure layout has blossomed in multiple directions:
Signed a 20-year lease agreement with TeraWulf for a load of 401 megawatts, worth up to $19 billion;
Reached a supply agreement worth $10 billion with infrastructure startup Volta Infra Holdings;
Finalized a computing power procurement intention of nearly $45 billion with xAI;
Established AI data center partnerships with Hut 8 and Fluidstack.
Its strategic goal is singular: to seize the physical computing power resources for the coming decades in advance.
Compared to the several years of construction time, huge capital expenditures, and operational risks of self-built AIDs, this "long-term leasing" model allows Anthropic to secure computing power supply for the coming decades while retaining maximum capital flexibility, transferring the burden of heavy asset construction to more specialized infrastructure providers, while it focuses on model research and commercialization. This is also a typical approach for leading players as the AI arms race enters a deeper phase: it's no longer just about the ability to buy chips, but about the speed of locking down power and land.
Riot secures $9.1 billion deal: ready power, reliable delivery, solid foundation
Driven by both Bitcoin halving and AI surges, US-listed mining companies have nearly all commenced their transformation towards AIDC. Core Scientific, TeraWulf, IREN, Hut 8, Cipher Mining, every one of them is telling the story of “computing power hosting.” PANews believes that Anthropic ultimately handed the $9.1 billion super order to Riot for three reasons.
1. Power: Scarce “energized” nodes
Currently, the biggest bottleneck in global AIDC construction is obtaining access permits for substations and high-voltage power grids. Traditional data center developers often face a 2-4 year wait from applying for grid access to finally being energized.
Riot’s Rockdale Park is one of North America’s largest standalone digital infrastructure parks, having already obtained approval from the Texas grid (ERCOT) and realized high-voltage electric access. It is one of the few ready-made nodes in the U.S. that can be directly transformed into an AI computing power center.
In contrast, most of Core Scientific’s capacity has been locked in by CoreWeave; TeraWulf’s existing capacity has also been significantly diverted by clients like Fluidstack. For Anthropic, which is eager to establish capacity, Riot's "plug-and-play" power quota is nearly irreplaceable in the market.
Texas has become a popular location for AIDC due to low electricity prices, but it is necessary to be cautious about: the impact of large-scale high-load facilities on the grid is leading to increasing regulatory scrutiny.
Bitcoin mining offers a high degree of flexibility, allowing for shutdowns in response to the grid’s peak shaving; however, training and inference for AI models require uninterrupted power 24/7, which imposes a vastly different requirement on grid stability. When high loads continuously press onto the grid, local regulations may tighten.
2. Delivery certainty: engineering capabilities validated by AMD
Frontline AI labs are highly sensitive to the timelines for power delivery. Delays in construction mean delayed model training, delayed product releases, disrupted funding rhythms, and the potential costs far exceed construction costs.
Riot's engineering fulfillment capability has been market-validated. In January of this year, it signed an initial 50-megawatt data center lease agreement with AMD. By the second quarter, it had completed the initial 25 megawatts of IT capacity construction and delivery on time and within budget.
More importantly, Riot is not just a simple “sub-lessor.” It has its own engineering manufacturing and assembly facilities in Denver and Houston, possessing end-to-end engineering control over transformer design, customized cooling systems, and site construction, significantly reducing risks of supply chain interruption and construction delays.
However, in the fast-evolving AI field, a two-year engineering window is filled with uncertainties: chip architectures may iterate, the structure of computing power demand may change, and construction costs may overrun.
3. Financial resilience: a sufficiently solid foundation to withstand heavy asset transformation
Transitioning from Bitcoin mining to AIDC requires a hefty investment: the industry average capital expenditure for transforming each megawatt is as high as $7.5 million. Many small and medium-sized mining companies fall by the wayside due to fragile balance sheets and broken cash flows.
As of the end of the second quarter this year, Riot holds over $1.2 billion in liquid assets on its books, including approximately $549 million in cash and a reserve of 11,380 Bitcoins. To support the construction of Rockdale Park, it also secured a $573 million transitional financing agreement with Morgan Stanley.
With cash, reserves, and bank credits, Anthropic does not have to worry about Riot running out of money halfway through construction.
However, whether it’s Riot or other transforming Bitcoin mining companies, the current large orders are highly dependent on a few AI labs and cloud providers. If their commercialization or funding rhythms cannot keep up with massive capital expenditures, the ability to fulfill long-term hosting agreements will face market skepticism.
Goodbye to relying on luck, Bitcoin mining companies rewrite valuation formulas
This $9.1 billion deal not only represents a business upgrade for Riot, but also signifies a fundamental reconstruction of the capital logic of Bitcoin mining companies.
Thicker earnings: income efficiency rises 1-3 times
The most intuitive impact is a qualitative leap in income efficiency per megawatt of power.
In the past, Bitcoin mining earnings were highly tied to price fluctuations and network difficulty, with profit margins continually narrowing after halving and exhibiting strong cyclicality. However, by shifting power toward computing power hosting, the annualized income per megawatt approaches $2.4 million, making the earnings efficiency 1 to 3 times that of mining. More importantly, income comes from long-term agreements, making cash flows highly predictable and breaking free from the cyclic fluctuations of the crypto market.
Valuation reshaping: from high-beta concept stocks to infrastructure operators
A change in valuation logic is even more profound than income changes.
Capital markets have traditionally applied discounted valuations to Bitcoin mining companies, typically with EBITDA multiples ranging only between 6-12 times. In contrast, data center infrastructure operators with long-term stable cash flows commonly command EBITDA valuation multiples of 20-25 times.
With the cumulative realization of 241 megawatts and about $9.8 billion in long-term contracts with AMD and Anthropic, Riot is on the brink of completing its metamorphosis: from a high-volatility crypto concept stock to an infrastructure company with utility attributes.
Capital allocation: sell Bitcoin, buy hard assets
Beneath the transformation lies a capital turnover within the crypto industry.
To raise construction funds for AIDC modifications, Riot sold 9,665 Bitcoins in the second quarter this year, cashing in approximately $733 million. This may become a consensus among mining companies: converting Bitcoin reserves that no longer generate cash flow into physical hard assets that can produce stable long-term income.
Mining companies will no longer be mere “miners” of Bitcoin, but will transform into “landlords” of computing resources. With their past engineering experience and physical assets, they are becoming indispensable infrastructure providers in the AI era.
Of course, transformation is never instantaneous. Delivery capabilities, technological changes, and regulatory risks are all challenges confronting them, but those players who have preemptively secured resources will ultimately realize their value reassessment in this wave of AI.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
