Riot sells 10,599 Bitcoin to fund $28B AI data center lease

Riot Platforms handed off 10,599 Bitcoin during the third quarter, per CoinDesk, shrinking its stack from 11,380 BTC down to just 2,418. That's the bulk of the miner's treasury gone in a single quarter — one of the biggest single-entity Bitcoin sales in recent memory.

The cash isn't sitting idle. According to CoinDesk, the sale is tied to funding a 910MW data center lease with an unnamed AI lab — a deal worth $28B stretched across 15 years. That's a massive power footprint and an even bigger price tag.

It marks a hard pivot in where Riot's money is going. Instead of stacking coins, the company is pouring capital into compute capacity for artificial intelligence, a sector that has been hoovering up power and land at a frantic pace.

The AI lab behind the lease hasn't been named, and neither has the site. What's clear is the scale: 910 megawatts is enough to run a serious hyperscale campus, and the $28B contract is the kind of number that reshapes a balance sheet.

Riot ends the quarter holding 2,418 BTC — a fraction of what it had when the period started. Whether that's a one-time move or the shape of things to come depends on how the data center buildout plays out.