TeraWulf lands $19bn Anthropic datacentre lease deal
TL;DR:
- TeraWulf has signed a 20-year lease with Anthropic expected to generate about $19bn (£15bn) in contracted revenue.
- The purpose-built campus in Hawesville, Kentucky, will support roughly 401MW of critical IT load, with full capacity by early 2028.
- Shares in the former bitcoin miner jumped more than 10%, having already gained about 85% year to date.
The deal, announced on 6 July, locks in long-term, recurring revenue from an AI customer and accelerates TeraWulf’s shift away from bitcoin mining — a transition the company flagged in May as the future of its business. To free capital for wholly owned AI projects, it is also selling its 50.1% stake in the Abernathy joint venture to an investor group led by partner Fluidstack, monetising a roughly $450m (£354m) investment at a premium.
Compute as the new commodity
The number that matters is the power figure. A single campus supporting 401MW of IT load illustrates how the frontier labs’ appetite for compute is reshaping the market for both energy and real estate, and why crypto miners — already holding grid connections and cheap-power sites — are becoming AI landlords. Initial capacity is due online in the second half of 2027.
Looking forward
For UK readers, the contrast is instructive. While a US bitcoin miner can commit 401MW to a single Anthropic campus with a firm 2028 delivery date, Britain’s flagship AI sites are struggling with exactly this constraint: Scotland’s Lanarkshire growth zone cannot meet its green-power pledge, and grid waits stretch to eight to 10 years. The TeraWulf deal is a reminder that AI infrastructure is ultimately an energy story — and that ready access to power, not planning ambition, is what determines where the compute actually gets built.