Riot filing names Anthropic as tenant in $28 billion Texas lease

What happened

Riot Platforms identified Anthropic as the tenant behind a 15-year lease valued at roughly $28 billion on its Corsicana, Texas campus, according to the bitcoin miner's quarterly report filed Wednesday. The company's earnings release the same day had referred to the counterparty only as a "leading Frontier AI Lab."

The 10-Q states that a Riot subsidiary signed the lease on Oct. 28 with Anthropic PBC, and that the agreement became binding on Nov. 4 after the board approved it and outside consultants signed off on technical specifications. The filing applies the same defined term to the tenant of Riot's 191 MW Rockdale lease, signed in August, which means Anthropic is the counterparty on 1,101 MW of the 1,151 MW Riot has contracted. AMD holds the remaining 50 MW.

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

Among the terms drawing attention is a restriction on how Riot operates the site. Riot cannot curtail Anthropic's power load or enroll the premises in voluntary demand-response programs without the tenant's consent, although mandatory orders from the utility or grid operator are exempt. The lease also sets a phased delivery schedule: 400 MW with a first block targeted for June 28, 2027, another 200 MW starting Dec. 24, 2027, and 310 MW on July 30, 2028.

Why it matters

The consent requirement touches a practice central to Riot's mining business. The company has sold unused or uneconomic contracted power at Rockdale and voluntarily reduced consumption at Rockdale and Corsicana during Texas summer peaks, and it reported $25 million in companywide power-curtailment credits in the third quarter. Under the Corsicana lease, that flexibility is subject to a tenant's approval for the leased load, a shift from mining's interruptible power use toward AI capacity governed by contract.

Anthropic bears the leased site's electricity bill, and the disclosures do not quantify any curtailment income Riot might forgo. The lease also places most delivery risk on Riot. Capacity more than 60 days late triggers escalating rent credits capped at 270 days of base rent for undelivered blocks, and a phase not delivered within 270 days of its target can be terminated by Anthropic on 30 days' notice, subject to cure rights and extensions for force majeure or tenant-caused delays.

Background

Riot agreed to reimburse Anthropic up to $4 million per megawatt for data center modules the tenant installs, or about $3.6 billion across the full 910 MW, provided Riot raises money on market terms reasonably acceptable to it. If that financing is unavailable, Riot would instead grant rent credits that amortize the amount plus interest at 12% per year over the remaining initial term, effectively leaving Anthropic to finance the build and recover the cost from rent.

Riot's base case is to fund the reimbursements with non-recourse project debt sized to the contracted rent. It puts the total capital requirement at about $6 million per MW, or $5.5 billion, and said it does not currently expect to issue equity for the project. The build is also why the company has been selling bitcoin: it sold 20,264 BTC for about $1.5 billion in the first nine months of 2026 and ended September with 2,418 BTC worth $202 million. The filing adds that Riot expects to continue selling substantially all of the bitcoin it mines.

What to watch

The immediate test for Riot is whether lenders fund the Corsicana build on terms that keep the 12% interest clause on paper only. Also worth watching is delivery of the phased capacity against the 2027 and 2028 targets, since delays carry rent credits and, beyond 270 days, termination rights for the affected phase. A change of control involving certain restricted parties would allow Anthropic to terminate or buy Riot's interest in the premises at 95% of fair market value, while Riot's own termination right is limited to uncured payment defaults and bankruptcy events.

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