An NVIDIA-backed startup has secured a $68 billion contract with Anthropic for AI data center infrastructure and compute services, the largest third-party infrastructure commitment reported to date

Anthropic, the US-based developer of the large language model Claude, has signed a $100 billion computing power contract with Volta Infra Holdings, a British AI infrastructure company, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg on August 4. The agreement spans six years, with Anthropic obligated to pay an average of approximately $16.7 billion annually over the contract period. Volta announced the deal publicly on August 4 but initially withheld the customer's identity.

As part of the arrangement, Volta and crypto-mining-turned-infrastructure company Bitdeer will jointly develop an AI factory in Norway. The facility will have a total power capacity of 133 megawatts and will be equipped with NVIDIA Vera Rubin systems. Neither Anthropic nor Bitdeer has commented on the specifics of the project, including delivery schedules, computing capacity details, or payment methods.

Volta was founded in January 2026 and emerged from stealth on August 4, announcing the completion of $300 million in seed and Series A funding at a valuation of $2.4 billion. The funding round was jointly led by venture capital firm a16z and technology investment firm Altimeter Capital, with participation from NVIDIA and Michael Dell, founder of Dell Technologies. Volta's founding team—CEO Ricard Boada and Chief Corporate Development Officer Sofia Gumuzio—both previously worked in infrastructure at Brookfield Asset Management. Boada, who served as Senior Vice President at Brookfield, led global AI infrastructure investments and participated in dozens of multibillion-dollar data center and communications infrastructure acquisitions, and previously worked in infrastructure investment banking at Morgan Stanley. Gumuzio, who has an engineering background, worked as a financial analyst focused on mergers and acquisitions at Spanish alternative asset manager Azora before joining Brookfield's AI infrastructure and real estate investment teams.

Unlike traditional cloud providers, Volta integrates institutional capital, power resources, data centers, AI chips, software, and operations into a single platform. The company believes that the primary constraint for AI companies building dedicated computing infrastructure is no longer demand, power, or chip availability, but rather financing. Volta has established a partnership with Spanish asset manager Azora to organize $50 billion in non-dilutive infrastructure capital from multiple banks, allowing customers to obtain dedicated computing power through long-term contracts. Under this model, institutional investors provide capital to build and operate AI factories, earning returns through cash flows generated by customer contracts. Volta handles site acquisition, power procurement, data center construction, chip deployment, software provisioning, and operations, while customers pay fixed fees over multi-year agreements. CEO Boada envisions computing power as a new infrastructure asset class—one that, like electricity, can be supplied reliably and priced transparently.

Volta has recently secured 1 gigawatt of power supply capacity for its data centers and plans to develop additional sites in Texas and Wyoming, targeting several gigawatts of deployed computing power by 2030. The company currently employs approximately 100 people across London, Palo Alto, and New York. Dell Technologies will serve as a technology partner, providing data center equipment, and Volta acquired Genesis Cloud technology earlier in 2026, obtaining software for public AI cloud and bare metal cluster management.

Bitdeer, Volta's partner on the Norway project, has pivoted from its primary cryptocurrency mining business as Bitcoin prices declined and mining operations faced pressure. Following the announcement of the $100 billion contract, Bitdeer's stock price rose nearly 10 percent in pre-market trading on August 4 and closed up 2.81 percent in after-hours trading. The company is transforming select data centers in Texas, Tennessee, and Washington from cryptocurrency operations to AI infrastructure.

Anthropic is broadly accelerating its computing power acquisition, having signed agreements with SpaceX, AMD, and cloud provider Akamai, and having discussed leasing Meta's data centers. The company raised $650 billion in May 2026 to fund model development and infrastructure expenditures and is reportedly considering an IPO as early as 2026.

Volta's financing and partnership model reflects a broader trend in AI infrastructure. Broadcom is cooperating with investment firms Apollo and Blackstone to provide financial support for Anthropic's purchase of Google TPUs. AI cloud provider CoreWeave has employed multiple funding strategies to acquire NVIDIA chips, leveraging the strong credit ratings of customers such as Meta Platforms. Bloomberg reported on July 27 that NVIDIA is planning to provide financing for OpenAI's 10-gigawatt data center project, which could reach a total value of $5 trillion, with NVIDIA potentially funding $3.5 trillion of OpenAI's chip procurement.

These arrangements have created tighter interdependencies between chip suppliers, cloud computing companies, financial institutions, and AI labs—with chip companies investing in cloud providers, cloud providers purchasing chips, and then securing loans based on long-term customer contracts. Some industry observers have questioned these transactions as potential instances of "circular financing."

Altimeter partner Jamin Ball predicts that the AI infrastructure market will eventually undergo significant consolidation. Companies without stable customer bases, adequate capital reserves, or secure supply chains will face pressure in any downturn. Volta's rapid ascent to a $100 billion contract just seven months after its founding underscores intensifying competition in the AI infrastructure sector.