Riot Discloses $9.1B AI Data Center Lease; Report Identifies Anthropic
Riot Platforms disclosed a 20-year lease for 191 megawatts of critical IT capacity at its Rockdale, Texas, campus, with about $9.1 billion in expected contract revenue through June 2048. Riot called the customer an unnamed frontier AI lab; Livemint, citing Bloomberg and people familiar with the matter, identified Anthropic as the tenant. The filing projects phased delivery from December 2027 through June 2028.
Riot Platforms disclosed on August 10 a 20-year data center lease for 191 megawatts of critical IT capacity at its Rockdale, Texas, campus. The company expects approximately $9.1 billion in contract revenue over the initial term, which runs through June 2048. Two five-year options controlled by the tenant could raise the potential total to about $16.1 billion if both are exercised.
Riot's SEC-hosted announcement describes the customer only as a leading frontier AI lab. Livemint reported on August 11, citing Bloomberg and people familiar with the matter, that the tenant is Anthropic. That identification comes from reporting rather than Riot's public filing, so it should be treated as attributed information unless Riot or Anthropic names the counterparty directly.
Capacity and delivery schedule
Riot said the build-to-suit Tier 3 project will deliver an initial 96 megawatts of critical IT capacity in December 2027, with the full 191 megawatts expected by June 2028. The company said the project can use Rockdale's existing approved grid interconnection.
The lease is Riot's second announced AI data center customer at Rockdale after AMD. Together, Riot says the two agreements cover 241 megawatts of critical IT capacity. This marks a material shift in the company's use of a campus historically associated with bitcoin mining toward long-duration AI and high-performance-computing infrastructure.
Economics remain company projections
Riot estimates cumulative net operating income of $7.3 billion to $8.2 billion over the base term, or an average of $365 million to $411 million annually. It also disclosed a $573 million interim financing facility from Morgan Stanley for initial development costs while an investment-grade credit backstop is finalized.
Those figures are forward-looking estimates rather than realized revenue. Delivery timing, construction costs, financing, tenant performance, and any exercise of the extension options will determine the eventual economics.
For infrastructure teams and investors, the practical signal is the scale and duration of the commitment: 191 megawatts is a large dedicated power and cooling footprint, while the 2027-2028 delivery schedule shows how far in advance frontier-model developers are reserving capacity. The attribution distinction is equally important: the lease terms are in Riot's official disclosure, but the tenant's identity is currently supported by reported sourcing.
Key Points
- 1Riot disclosed a 20-year lease for 191 MW of critical IT capacity at Rockdale, with about $9.1 billion in expected revenue through June 2048.
- 2Riot left the frontier-AI tenant unnamed; Livemint, citing Bloomberg and people familiar with the matter, identified Anthropic.
- 3Riot projects 96 MW of delivery in December 2027 and full deployment by June 2028, backed initially by a $573 million Morgan Stanley financing facility.
Scoring Rationale
A 191 MW, 20-year lease with $9.1 billion in projected base-term revenue is a material AI-infrastructure commitment with direct implications for compute capacity, power planning, and the bitcoin-miner-to-data-center transition. The tenant identity remains attributed reporting rather than a named party in Riot's filing, which limits certainty but not the significance of the disclosed contract.
Sources
Primary source and supporting public references used for this report.
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