Riot Platforms has signed a 20-year lease for 191 megawatts of data center capacity at its Rockdale, Texas campus, a contract the Bitcoin miner expects will produce about $9.1 billion in revenue through June 2048 as it expands into AI and high-performance computing infrastructure.
The unnamed customer was described by Riot as a “leading frontier AI lab.” Bloomberg reported that the counterparty is Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot. Riot did not identify the customer in its own announcement.
Riot’s shares climbed 25.26% in after-hours trading Monday to $24.30 after closing the regular session down 5.46%. The market reaction followed the lease announcement and the company’s second-quarter results, which showed rising revenue but a wider reported net loss.
The Rockdale agreement extends Riot’s effort to use its Texas power infrastructure for computing customers beyond its own Bitcoin mining fleet. Under the contract, Riot is scheduled to provide the first 96 megawatts of IT capacity by December 2027 and the full 191 megawatts by June 2028.
Two optional five-year extensions could raise the potential value of the agreement to roughly $16.1 billion, Riot said. The base term alone is expected to generate average annual net operating income of between $365 million and $411 million, according to the company.
A second large AI computing tenant
The Anthropic-linked lease follows a separate January agreement with Advanced Micro Devices, the chip designer. Riot said it has signed contracts for 241 megawatts of data center capacity across the two customers in a little more than six months.
Those agreements represent approximately $9.8 billion in expected long-term revenue, the company said. The AMD contract has already begun contributing to Riot’s results: the company reported $23.2 million in data center revenue during the second quarter after completing delivery of an initial 25 megawatts of capacity under that deal.
Riot’s approach places value on the infrastructure it built for industrial-scale Bitcoin mining: land, substations, high-voltage connections, cooling systems and access to large volumes of electricity. These assets can also support AI data centers, which require substantial and reliable power to run clusters of advanced graphics processors.
For miners, such contracts offer a source of revenue that is tied to capacity delivery and long-term leases rather than Bitcoin’s price, mining difficulty and the pace of block-reward reductions. The shift does not eliminate Riot’s exposure to Bitcoin, given the scale of its mining operation and treasury, but it adds a potentially much larger contracted infrastructure business to the company’s model.
Financing construction before long-term debt is arranged
Riot said it has secured a $573 million interim financing facility from Morgan Stanley to begin development for the new Rockdale project. The facility is intended to cover early construction needs while Riot puts an investment-grade credit backstop in place.
The company said the financing carries a variable interest rate and matures on October 15. Its short duration means Riot will need to replace or refinance the facility as the project progresses toward its first scheduled capacity delivery at the end of 2027.
Building AI-oriented capacity can demand considerably more capital than operating existing mining machines. Data center customers generally require dedicated electrical infrastructure, hardened facilities and precise construction schedules before they can install their servers. Riot’s ability to convert its long-term lease commitments into predictable operating income will depend on completing that infrastructure on time and securing permanent financing on workable terms.
The company ended June with more than $1.2 billion in liquid assets, including $548.9 million in cash and 11,380 Bitcoin, according to its earnings release. Those holdings give Riot a substantial reserve, although the value of its Bitcoin treasury will continue to fluctuate with the market.
Revenue rises while quarterly loss widens
Riot reported total revenue of $174.2 million for the three months ended June 30, up 14% from $153 million a year earlier. Bitcoin mining remained its largest business, generating $113.7 million in quarterly revenue.
Engineering revenue reached $37.3 million, while the new data center segment accounted for $23.2 million. The latter figure was tied to the initial AMD capacity delivery, offering an early indication of how hosting revenue could develop before the much larger Rockdale lease begins.
The company mined 1,587 Bitcoin during the quarter. Riot said its cash cost to mine one Bitcoin was $49,912, a figure that shows mining profitability remains closely linked to Bitcoin market conditions and operating expenses such as electricity.
Riot reported a net loss of $237.2 million, or $0.68 per diluted share, compared with net income of $219.5 million, or $0.58 per share, in the second quarter of 2025. The swing underscores the uneven earnings profile that can result from Bitcoin-price movements, mining economics and accounting effects tied to the company’s sizable digital-asset holdings.
Rockdale becomes central to Riot’s new model
The Rockdale campus was developed as one of Riot’s principal Bitcoin mining locations. The Anthropic lease would repurpose part of that power-intensive footprint for an external computing client without requiring Riot to abandon mining.
That combination gives Riot two distinct revenue paths: operating mining hardware for its own account and leasing power-ready infrastructure to major technology customers. The data center agreements also create milestones that traders can track well before the full revenue impact arrives, beginning with construction financing and the planned 96-megawatt delivery in December 2027.
The company’s near-term results will remain heavily influenced by Bitcoin mining, which supplied roughly two-thirds of second-quarter revenue. Yet the scale of the new Rockdale commitment means Riot’s future financial profile will increasingly depend on whether it can execute as a large data center developer and operator, not solely as a publicly traded Bitcoin miner.
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