Key conclusions
- Riot Platforms has signed a 20-year lease for 191 megawatts of power at its Rockdale, Texas campus. The contract is expected to bring in approximately USD 9.1 billion, with two extension options raising this amount to USD 16.1 billion.
- The company called the client “one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence studios.” Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that it was Anthropic. Neither side has officially confirmed this.
- Riot shares closed Monday at $19.40 and broke through $24 after the session. On Tuesday before the opening, they were up by more than 20 percent.
- Miners are not leaving bitcoin because of ideology. Ten megawatts of graphics cards can generate income comparable to one hundred megawatts of miners.
Riot Platforms has signed an agreement from which it will not earn a single dollar on the bitcoin price. The company leased 191 megawatts of power at its campus in Rockdale, Texas, for twenty years and expected to receive approximately USD 9.1 billion during this time. In a document filed with the US regulator, the client names itself anonymously as “one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence studios.” The name was added to the market by Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter: it is Anthropic, responsible for Claude. Riot declined to comment and Anthropic did not respond. This was enough for investors. Shares rose from $19.40 to above $24 after Monday’s close.
Twenty years of rent instead of twenty years of mining
The agreement is a lease, not an investment in bitcoin and not a mining contract. Riot is scheduled to deliver 96 megawatts in December 2027 and another 95 in June 2028. Only then will the full rent begin to flow. Two five-year extension options bring the total value to $16.1 billion, which sounds like a number from another league given the company’s valuation today.
For the buyer, this transaction is the third large capacity contract in three months. In total, there are liabilities exceeding USD 60 billion, including a contract for USD 10 billion with a Norwegian data center. The race for electricity is in full swing and the winner is the one who has a signed connection, not the one who has the best model.
Rockdale is not a random address. This is Riot’s flagship mining facility, a place built to turn cheap Texas electricity into bitcoin and now into computation for AI models.
Nine mines are in the same queue
This is not the achievement of one company. Nine listed mines have already announced a move towards data centers, including IREN, Core Scientific, CleanSpark, HIVE, Cipher and TeraWulf. TeraWulf has gone the furthest and talks directly about quitting mining. Core Scientific is raising $3.3 billion in subprime bonds to accelerate its turnaround. According to the CoinShares report for the first quarter of 2026, the value of contracts announced in the artificial intelligence power sector exceeded USD 70 billion.
The mechanism is brutally simple and there is no philosophy in it. HIVE calculated that ten megawatts of power with Nvidia graphics cards gives revenue comparable to one hundred megawatts of miners. In addition, the rental fee is fixed and for two decades, and the income from mining depends on the exchange rate and every four years the amount of BTC mined is halved. The management, which has electricity and a hall, does not need a longer justification. It is estimated that by the end of 2027, approximately 20 percent of the mine’s power may be used for artificial intelligence.
Is Bitcoin something to be afraid of?
I think not on this scale and not today. Rockdale is one campus of one company, and the power of the entire Bitcoin network is measured in gigawatts. When some machines shut down, mining difficulty drops and mining becomes cheaper for those left behind. The network has a built-in mechanism to compensate for this, and it has dealt with worse shocks for fifteen years.
Something else worries me, because this is not technological news, but accounting news. Bitcoin just lost a bid for electricity to a customer who pays more, pays monthly and signs up for twenty years. As long as it stays that way, mining will be what the company does with a capacity for which it has not found a better tenant.
There is also a risk on the other side. Riot now has to shell out billions for construction, and the first full rent is due in December 2027. If the appetite for computing power weakens earlier, he will be left with the hall, debt and a contract worth as much as the tenant’s solvency. The name of this tenant still comes from a leak, not from a statement.
What does this mean for you
If you’re buying mining stocks as a cheaper exposure to bitcoin, check one number in their reports: how many megawatts the company has put up for computing power contracts. Above a certain threshold, you are no longer buying a bet on the Bitcoin price, but renting real estate for servers. It is a completely different investment, with a different risk and a different cycle, although in the portfolio it looks the same as yesterday.
If you’re just holding bitcoin, today’s deal doesn’t change anything in your wallet. The market itself does not seem to notice this today. Bitcoin is hovering around $64,300, the Fear and Greed Index is showing 29, and everyone is looking at tomorrow’s US inflation data. The largest transaction in the history of this mine passed in the background, unnoticed.
