Anthropic secures $9.1B lease at Riot's Rockdale data center for 191 MW AI campus in Texas.

Riot Platforms has secured a second major AI data center tenant at its Rockdale, Texas campus, signing a 20-year agreement for 191 MW of critical IT capacity at a new build-to-suit Tier 3 facility. The project will support one of the world's leading frontier AI labs; Anthropic has been linked to the transaction, which exceeds $9 billion in value for the data center project in Milam County, Texas.

Riot expects to deliver the first 96 MW in December 2027 and complete the full 191 MW deployment by June 2028. The initial lease term runs through June 2048, with the tenant holding two five-year extension options that could raise the total potential contract value to approximately $16.1 billion. Riot expects the agreement to generate approximately $9.1 billion in contract revenue during the initial term, though this represents expected lease revenue rather than the project's total construction cost.

To fund initial development costs, Riot has secured a $573 million interim financing facility from Morgan Stanley while it finalizes an investment-grade credit backstop. The company plans to use its existing, fully approved interconnection at Rockdale to support the project.

This agreement represents a major expansion of data center development at the Rockdale campus, where Riot has already deployed capacity for AMD and continues construction on additional expansions. Riot completed delivery of AMD's initial 25 MW deployment in the second quarter of 2026. Construction is now underway on a further 25 MW expansion, with 10 MW scheduled for delivery in November 2026 and the remaining 15 MW expected in May 2027. Together, the two agreements bring Riot's executed data center leases at Rockdale to 241 MW of capacity.

The 191 MW project marks a significant step in Riot's expansion into AI and high-performance computing infrastructure, substantially larger than its initial AMD deployment and subsequent expansion at the same campus. As Riot advances its Texas development, other data center projects have progressed toward later stages. WhiteFiber's NC-1 data center campus in North Carolina recently moved from construction into active customer deployment, with initial capacity delivered and billing underway across its first 40 MW of contracted IT load.