Riot Discloses Anthropic as Tenant of $28 Billion Texas Data Center Lease

Riot Platforms disclosed in a quarterly SEC filing on Wednesday that Anthropic PBC is the tenant behind a 15-year lease worth roughly $28 billion on its Corsicana, Texas campus. The bitcoin miner's results release the same day had described the counterparty only as a "leading Frontier AI Lab." The 10-Q names the Claude developer directly.

The filing says a Riot subsidiary signed the lease on Oct. 28 "with Anthropic PBC (the 'Frontier AI Lab')," and the agreement became binding on Nov. 4 after Riot's board approved it and outside consultants signed off on the technical specifications.

The deal matters beyond Corsicana. The 10-Q uses the same defined term for the tenant of Riot's 191 MW Rockdale lease, signed in August. That makes Anthropic the counterparty on 1,101 MW of the 1,151 MW Riot has contracted. AMD holds the remaining 50 MW.

What are the lease economics?

The Corsicana lease covers 910 MW of critical IT capacity across the campus. Base rent starts at $130 per kilowatt per month and rises 3% a year. At that starting rate, the full 910 MW would generate about $1.42 billion annually. Riot puts average annual rent at roughly $1.8 billion over the initial term, or about $54 billion in total if Anthropic exercises both five-year extensions.

The financing terms carry the sharpest edge. Riot agreed to reimburse Anthropic up to $4 million per megawatt for the data center modules the tenant installs — up to about $3.6 billion across the full 910 MW.

That reimbursement depends on Riot raising money "on market terms reasonably acceptable to it." If financing isn't available, the 10-Q says Riot will instead grant Anthropic rent credits that amortize the amount "plus interest at 12% per year" over the rest of the initial term. In that scenario, Anthropic would effectively finance the build itself and recover the cost out of rent at a double-digit rate.

Riot's base case is different. The company expects to fund the reimbursements with non-recourse project debt sized to the contracted rent, and it puts the total capital requirement at about $6 million per MW, or $5.5 billion. Riot said it does not currently expect to issue equity for the project.

Who carries the delivery risk?

The lease puts most of it on Riot. Capacity arrives in three phases: 400 MW with a first block targeted for June 28, 2027, 200 MW starting Dec. 24, 2027, and 310 MW on July 30, 2028.

If Riot delivers more than 60 days late, Anthropic earns escalating rent credits capped at 270 days of base rent for the undelivered blocks. If a phase isn't delivered within 270 days of its target, Anthropic can terminate the lease for that phase on 30 days' notice, with force majeure extensions of up to 365 days.

The contract also limits Riot's grid business. The miner cannot curtail Anthropic's power load or enroll the site in voluntary demand response programs without consent — a notable constraint for a company that built its mining business partly on selling power back to the Texas grid. A change of control involving certain restricted parties would let Anthropic terminate the lease or buy Riot's interest in the premises at 95% of fair market value.

Riot's own right to terminate is limited to uncured payment defaults and bankruptcy events.

Why has Riot been selling bitcoin?

The data center build is the reason. Riot sold 20,264 BTC for about $1.5 billion in the first nine months of 2026, starting with 3,778 coins in the first quarter, and ended September holding 2,418 BTC worth $202 million.

The 10-Q adds that Riot expects to "continue to sell substantially all of the bitcoin we mine" and does not expect to accumulate significant holdings in the near term. That puts the company on a different path from miners such as American Bitcoin, which posted a third-quarter profit this week largely on gains in its bitcoin treasury.

The test now is whether lenders fund the Corsicana build on terms that keep the 12% clause on paper only — with the first 400 MW delivery deadline set for June 28, 2027.