Riot Names Anthropic as $28B Corsicana Tenant

Riot Platforms made its money turning Texas electricity into bitcoin. Its biggest deal yet rents out the outlet instead. Riot's quarterly 10-Q names Anthropic, the developer of Claude, as the tenant on a 15-year, 910-megawatt lease at its Corsicana campus worth about $28 billion, Bitcoin Magazine reports ^[1].

Riot's earnings release and 8-K left the tenant unnamed, and Blockchain Reporter treated the Anthropic link as press reporting ^[2]; the 10-Q settles it ^[1]. The deal is a triple-net powered land lease: Riot supplies land, high-voltage gear and powered pads, while Anthropic owns the computers and pays power, taxes and insurance ^[2][3]. Chief executive Jason Les said, "The structure of this new lease matters as much as the scale." ^[2]

How the deal works

• Base rent starts at $130 per kilowatt a month and rises 3% a year, which by our math is $1.56 million a year per megawatt ^[1][3].
• At that starting rate, all 910 MW bring in about $1.42 billion a year, and Riot projects a $1.8 billion annual average over the term ^[1][2].
• Riot pegs the build at about $6 million per megawatt, or $5.5 billion, which it says implies a 33% unlevered yield on cost ^[2].
• Riot now needs Anthropic's consent for voluntary power cuts, a tool that earned it about $25 million in curtailment credits last quarter ^[2][3].

But that lean build bill depends on borrowed money. Riot owes Anthropic up to $4 million per megawatt, about $3.6 billion, for its compute modules, provided Riot can raise financing on terms it accepts ^[1][3]. If not, Anthropic gets rent credits repaying that sum plus 12% yearly interest over the remaining initial term, and any phase over 270 days late can be cancelled ^[1][3].

What it means for you

For anyone sizing up Riot or other miners turned landlords, the 12% fallback is the swing factor, and Riot's release does not quantify it ^[2]. By our math, $3.6 billion repaid at 12% over 15 years costs about $529 million a year, roughly 29% of the $1.8 billion average rent, and more if fewer years remain. That rate sits far above the 7% prime rate ^[4] and near the top of the 10.43% to 12.59% range NAHB found for builder construction loans ^[5].

Zoom out

Riot sold 20,264 bitcoin for about $1.5 billion this year to fund the pivot and now counts about $38 billion of contracted revenue across 1,151 MW ^[1][2]. None of that rent arrives until pads are delivered, starting in 2027 ^[2][3].