Anthropic PBC will pay $19 billion to lease a TeraWulf Inc. data center for 20 years.
TeraWulf, a Nasdaq-listed developer of artificial intelligence infrastructure, announced the deal today. The company’s shares rose 4.8% on the news.
The data center that Anthropic has agreed to lease is currently being built on the site of a former aluminum smelting facility in Hawesville, Kentucky. The 790-acre campus has existing power transmission and fiber-optic infrastructure, which will speed up construction. Building new overhead power lines can take years in some cases.
TeraWulf expects to bring an unspecified amount of “initial capacity” online in the second half of 2027. The facility will become fully operational the following year with 401 megawatts of computing power.
The AI infrastructure provider will use a so-called closed-loop cooling system to dissipate heat from the graphics cards inside the data center. According to the company, the system doesn’t draw water from local reservoirs but rather recycles the same cooling liquid. The coolant is a mix of water and a material called propylene glycol that is also used as a food additive.
The liquid is circulated through closet-like structures behind server racks to absorb heat from graphics cards. Pumps subsequently move the coolant outside the data center, where fans help radiate the heat into the atmosphere. The coolant then returns to the server rack and the process repeats itself.
TeraWulf stands to realize a significant return on investment from its deal with Anthropic. A company presentation states that it intends to invest between $3 billion and $4 billion in the data center, or less than one-fifth the lease’s value. Last quarter, it posted $34 million in revenue.
It’s unclear what chips Anthropic will install in the facility. Last week, rumors emerged that it may partner with Samsung Electronics Co. to produce a custom inference accelerator. The AI developer also uses chips from Nvidia Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Google LLC.
“When we announced the Justified Data campus acquisition in February, we told investors that we expected to secure a major customer commitment by around the end of the second quarter of 2026,” said TeraWulf Chief Executive Paul Prager. “The timing of today’s announcement reflects the completion of final documentation and customary transaction processes.”
The Anthropic lease is not the only data center deal that TeraWulf announced today.
Last year, the company teamed up with fellow data center developer Fluidstack Ltd. to build a 168-megawatt AI facility in Abernathy, Texas. TeraWulf today disclosed that it has agreed to sell its 50.1% stake in the facility to Fluidstack for $450 million. The deal is expected to provide a “premium to invested capital.”
Last November, Anthropic partnered with Fluidstack to build a network of data centers in the U.S. The companies indicated that the first facilities will be constructed in Texas and New York. As a result, it’s possible that the Abernathy data center will host Anthropic workloads much like the Hawesville campus.
Photo: Terawulf
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