Bitcoin miner Riot could pay Anthropic 12% interest under $28 billion AI deal

Riot Platforms, a bitcoin miner turning its Texas power sites into AI campuses, has signed a $28 billion agreement with Anthropic that could leave it paying the Claude developer 12% interest on billions in construction costs.

The deal covers 910 megawatts at Riot’s Corsicana campus, with capacity arriving in phases through July 2028. Riot supplies the land and electrical infrastructure, and Anthropic installs and runs the computing equipment. Riot expects average annual rent of about $1.8 billion over the 15-year initial term once everything is running.

Getting there is expensive, however. The earnings presentation released Wednesday puts the total cost at roughly $5.5 billion. About $1.8 billion of that is Riot’s own site and electrical work, and up to $3.6 billion goes to reimbursing Anthropic for its datacenter facilities. Those reimbursements depend on actual eligible costs and come due after each phase is delivered and starts earning rent.

Riot plans to borrow most of it. Its financing illustration assumes lenders cover 80% to 90% of the project’s cost, leaving Riot to put in roughly $500 million to $1.1 billion in cash. The financing process is set to launch in 2027.

In that case, Anthropic can recover eligible module costs by deducting them from future rent, plus interest at 12% a year, according to Riot’s quarterly filing.

CoinDesk has asked Riot how much rent it would collect after those deductions, whether it could repay the reimbursement early and what interest rate it is targeting for the project debt.

Riot has already been selling bitcoin to fund its move into data centers. In the first nine months of 2026 it sold 20,264 BTC for about $1.5 billion, mostly to fund datacenter development and repay its $200 million Coinbase loan. Just 2,418 BTC remained at the end of September, and Riot expects to keep selling substantially all newly mined coins.

Riot says it doesn’t currently expect to issue new shares to fund its announced projects. The first Corsicana capacity is due in June 2027, when it can start earning rent.