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Riot Platforms disclosed the identity of the artificial-intelligence company renting its Corsicana, Texas campus, naming Anthropic PBC as the counterparty on a 15-year lease worth roughly $28 billion, Bitcoin Magazine reported. The identification appears in the bitcoin miner’s quarterly 10-Q filing with the SEC, while the company’s earnings release the same day referred to the tenant only as a leading Frontier AI Lab.
The filing, dated Wednesday, says a Riot subsidiary signed the lease on Oct. 28 with Anthropic, and that the agreement became binding on Nov. 4 after the board approved it and outside consultants signed off on technical specifications. The same defined term covers the tenant of Riot’s 191 MW Rockdale lease signed in August, which means Anthropic holds contracts covering 1,101 MW of the 1,151 MW Riot has leased out. AMD accounts for the remaining 50 MW.
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Key facts
- The Corsicana lease spans 910 MW of critical IT capacity and starts at $130 per kilowatt per month, escalating 3% annually, which works out to about $1.42 billion a year at the opening rate.
- Riot cites average annual rent of about $1.8 billion over the initial term, or about $54 billion in total if Anthropic takes both five-year extensions.
- Riot committed to reimburse up to $4 million per megawatt for tenant-installed data center modules, or about $3.6 billion across the full campus.
- If Riot cannot raise financing on acceptable market terms, Anthropic receives rent credits amortizing that amount plus interest at 12% per year over the remaining initial term.
- Riot sold 20,264 BTC for roughly $1.5 billion in the first nine months of 2026 and held 2,418 BTC worth $202 million at the end of September.
Riot expects to fund the reimbursements through non-recourse project debt sized against contracted rent. It pegs the project’s total capital requirement at about $6 million per megawatt, or $5.5 billion, and says it does not currently plan to issue equity for the build. Under the triple-net structure, Riot supplies land and powered infrastructure while the tenant owns and operates the computing equipment and absorbs operating costs, Blockchain Reporter noted, citing a roughly 99% net operating income margin on average annual rent.
Delivery risk sits with the landlord
Capacity comes online in three blocks: 400 MW targeted for June 28, 2027, 200 MW starting Dec. 24, 2027, and 310 MW by July 30, 2028, per the filing. CoinCentral described a somewhat different rollout, placing the first 400 MW in September 2027 and the second block in January 2028. Late delivery beyond 60 days triggers rent credits that cap at 270 days of base rent for undelivered blocks, and a phase missing its target by 270 days lets Anthropic terminate that phase on 30 days’ notice, with force majeure allowances of up to 365 days.
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Other terms lean toward the tenant. Riot cannot curtail Anthropic’s power load or sign the site up for voluntary demand response without consent, a restriction that matters for a company that built part of its mining business on selling power back to the Texas grid. 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. Riot’s own termination rights are confined to uncured payment defaults and bankruptcy events.
Bitcoin treasury keeps shrinking
The build explains Riot’s coin sales through 2026, which began with 3,778 BTC in the first quarter. CoinCentral reported the company unloaded 10,599 BTC in the third quarter alone, cutting holdings from 11,380 BTC in June to 2,418 BTC in September. The filing adds that Riot expects to continue selling substantially all of the bitcoin it mines and does not anticipate building a significant treasury in the near term.
Riot traded at $15.49 on Wednesday, up about 14% after an 18.41% gain the previous session, according to CoinCentral. Third-quarter revenue rose 1% to $181.4 million, while net income fell to $4.03 million from $104.5 million a year earlier. Peer Hut 8 fell as much as 22% after a revenue miss.
Why it matters
Riot is shifting from a miner whose cash flow tracked the bitcoin price to a landlord collecting contracted rent, and CoinCentral reported that chief executive Jason Les said mining at Corsicana could begin winding down in summer 2027. The 12% clause means the cost of a financing failure lands on shareholders through years of reduced rent rather than on the tenant. The concentration is notable too: Anthropic holds nearly all of Riot’s leased capacity, so counterparty strength now underpins the company’s largest revenue line.
What to watch
The central test is whether Riot closes non-recourse project debt sized to the Corsicana rent on terms it deems acceptable, which would keep the 12% interest provision unused. Delivery of the first 400 MW phase in 2027 is the next hard checkpoint.
Sources: Bitcoin Magazine, CoinCentral, Blockchain Reporter
