Shares of Riot Platforms surged in early trading Tuesday after the Bitcoin miner-turned-data center operator revealed it had inked a $9.1 billion deal with a "leading frontier AI" company.
That customer is Anthropic, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to Barron's.
Riot stock began rising in after-hours trading Monday once the company disclosed a 20-year agreement to supply 191 megawatts of compute capacity from its Rockdale, Texas, campus to an unnamed AI company , now known to be Anthropic. Shares continued their ascent on Tuesday, spiking 16% in the premarket session.
Riot expects the deal, which runs through June 2048, to generate $9.1 billion in revenue, with two optional five-year extensions pushing potential total sales to $16.1 billion. The company didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Barron's.
The company traces its roots back to Bioptix, a diagnostic machinery maker that was purchased in 2016 by biotechnology firm Venaxis. Following the acquisition, the company pivoted into cryptocurrency mining and rebranded. Riot formally marked its shift into high-performance computing and data center leasing in January 2026, when it announced its first major institutional data center lease with Advanced Micro Devices.
While only indirectly linked, Riot and Anthropic shared a key connection through AMD. When Riot struck its deal with the chip maker, its Rockdale campus emerged as a candidate for AI lab facilities. By late July, AMD deepened its AI push with a multi-billion-dollar strategic partnership with Anthropic.
Jefferies analyst Jonathan Petersen noted that Riot had delivered an initial 25 megawatts to AMD in May, "on time and on budget." From his perspective, Riot's ability to stay on schedule bodes well for its execution ability, even though the AMD deal was more bespoke than a turnkey data-center deal.
"Still, this execution provides some comfort that Riot will be able to deliver its much larger frontier AI lab buildout" on time, Petersen wrote.
The company generated $174.2 million in revenue during its latest quarter. As of Monday's close, Riot's market capitalization hovered around $7.3 billion.