Riot Platforms has signed a 20-year lease for 191 megawatts of critical IT capacity at its Rockdale, Texas, campus. CNBC and other outlets report the tenant is Anthropic, though Riot hasn't publicly named the company. The contract is expected to generate about $9.1 billion through June 2048, with two five-year extensions potentially lifting the total to $16.1 billion.
The value of the lease
The base term alone brings in roughly $9.1 billion. That's a big number for a site that was built around Bitcoin mining. The extensions, if exercised, push the total contract value to $16.1 billion. The first 96 megawatts of capacity are due in December 2027, and the remaining 95 megawatts follow by June 2028.
A bridge that matures early
Riot has secured up to $573 million in interim financing through a senior secured delayed-draw facility administered by Morgan Stanley Senior Funding. But that bridge loan matures on Dec. 31, 2026 — about a year before the first Anthropic capacity goes live. The financing carries an interest rate of adjusted term SOFR plus 2.75% or a defined base rate plus 1.75%. It's secured by assets of the project borrower, with no recourse to Riot Platforms itself.
What Riot hasn't said
The company hasn't confirmed the tenant's identity, though reports point to Anthropic. Riot estimates the Rockdale project will cost between $2.1 billion and $2.3 billion, with debt financing expected to cover roughly $1.7 billion to $2.1 billion under an assumed 80% to 90% loan-to-cost structure. That leaves a gap that the bridge loan only partially covers.
The clock is ticking. Riot needs to replace that bridge financing by the end of the year, well before the first megawatt of capacity is scheduled to go live in December 2027. If the company can't line up long-term funding, the deal could get very expensive before it delivers anything.
