Riot Secures $9B AI Data Center Lease at Texas Bitcoin Mine
Riot Platforms has secured a massive 20-year lease for its Rockdale, Texas, bitcoin mining campus. The agreement, worth $9.1 billion in revenue over two decades, is with an unnamed artificial intelligence company.
The lease, which runs through June 2048 and includes options to extend by five years twice, will generate approximately $457 million per year on average. This is four times the revenue Riot's bitcoin mining business generated in the second quarter alone.
Riot's CEO Jason Les described the deal as 'a defining moment' in the company's evolution into a leading developer of large-scale data centers. The agreement will contribute significantly to the company's growth, with estimated cumulative net operating income of $7.3 billion to $8.2 billion over the base term.
The construction costs for the project are expected to be between $2.1 billion and $2.3 billion, with Morgan Stanley providing a $573 million interim financing facility to fund initial development costs. The company will continue to sell bitcoin inventory as its primary funding source for equity component of data center capital spending.