Riot Stock Soars on $9.1B Deal with AI Company Anthropic

Riot's stock surged by 24% in after-hours trading following a $9.1 billion deal with Anthropic, an AI company. The agreement involves supplying computing capacity at Riot's Rockdale, Texas campus over 20 years.

The deal is valued at $9.1 billion and was reported by Bloomberg on Monday. Although Riot disclosed the agreement earlier in the day, it described the partner as an unnamed 'leading frontier AI' company.

Riot's stock had already closed down more than 5% in regular trading, but the after-hours rally pushed its market value sharply higher. The company's latest earnings report also landed on Monday, showing a net loss of $237 million and revenue up 14% year-over-year to $174 million.

This move into AI hosting builds on a pattern that has been building for over a year, with miners selling Bitcoin to fund their expansion into AI infrastructure contracts. Analyst Shanaka Anslem Perera noted that public miners have sold more than 32,000 BTC combined in the first quarter and redirected that capital toward AI infrastructure contracts worth an estimated $70 billion across the industry.