Riot Platforms Secures $9B Deal with Anthropic for High-Performance Computing

Riot Platforms has made a significant move in its pivot towards high-performance computing, signing a 20-year deal to deliver 191 megawatts of data center capacity to Anthropic at its Rockdale, Texas facility. The expected revenue from the contract is $9.1B over the initial term, with two five-year extension options that could push the total haul to around $16.1B.

The deal represents one of the largest infrastructure commitments a Bitcoin miner has ever secured from an AI company, and at least one analyst is projecting a 55% upside for RIOT shares on the back of it. Riot's existing Rockdale infrastructure will be repurposed to serve Anthropic's growing appetite for compute power.

This isn't Riot's first foray into high-performance computing - the company already has an AMD AI chip hosting agreement at the same facility with a potential capacity of up to 200 MW. The contract suggests both parties expect demand for AI compute to persist well into the future, with five-year extension options baked in.

The entire publicly traded mining sector has been exploring ways to monetize existing infrastructure for high-performance computing workloads. If Riot can demonstrate that its infrastructure has dual-use value, serving both Bitcoin mining and AI compute, it could command a valuation multiple closer to a data center REIT than a crypto miner.