Riot Hands Anthropic Its Whole Corsicana Campus in $28B, 15-Year Lease

Riot Platforms just bet a big chunk of its future on AI tenants. The Bitcoin miner signed a 15-year lease with Anthropic covering 910 megawatts of IT capacity across its entire Corsicana campus, a deal Riot pegs at about $28 billion over the initial term. The agreement became binding on Nov. 4, the same day Riot reported earnings and CEO Jason Les called it the largest lease in the company's history.

The money is steady and sizable. Riot expects roughly $1.8 billion in average annual rent, contractual increases included. That pushes Riot's total contracted data center capacity to 1,151 MW and about $38 billion in long-term revenue. Anthropic already holds a 20-year, $9.1 billion lease for 191 MW at Rockdale, announced in August, while AMD takes the remaining contracted capacity.

This is not a build-to-suit lab like Rockdale's Tier 3 facility. Corsicana is a powered-land lease: Riot provides land, power infrastructure and prepared sites, and the tenant installs, owns and operates modular computing gear. The tenant absorbs substantially all operating costs, electricity included, and pays rent on the full contracted capacity whether or not it uses it.

Riot estimates its total capital requirement at $5.5 billion, covering site and electrical work plus reimbursements for the tenant's modules. It plans to fund those reimbursements with project debt. If suitable financing doesn't materialize, the tenant fronts that portion and gets credits against future rent, amortized with 12% annual interest over the remaining initial term, per Riot's quarterly filing.

The deal rewires a business still powered mostly by mining. Riot pulled in $116 million from bitcoin mining in the third quarter — about 64% of its $181.4 million total, by The Defiant's math — while data center revenue hit $18.4 million, fit-out reimbursements included. Riot sold 20,264 BTC for roughly $1.5 billion across the first nine months of 2026, mostly to bankroll data center development, and closed September with 2,418 BTC and $748.2 million in cash, $79.2 million of it restricted.

Mining isn't going anywhere yet. Riot reported 44.9 exahashes per second deployed as of Sept. 30: 16.6 at Corsicana, 15.4 at Rockdale and 12.9 in Kentucky — meaning an active mining site sits at the heart of the new AI commitment. On the buildout, the first block is targeted for June 2027, the full 400 MW first phase for September, another 200 MW for January 2028 and the final 310 MW for July 2028. Rent on each phase starts no later than 60 days after its powered sites are delivered.