Riot Platforms disclosed on 10 August, alongside second-quarter results, a 20-year lease for 191MW of critical IT capacity at Rockdale, Texas, to what it describes only as "one of the world's leading frontier AI labs".
The contract
Initial term runs to June 2048 and carries roughly $9.1bn of contracted revenue, with two five-year extensions that would lift the potential total to about $16.1bn. Riot puts the average annual NOI contribution at $365-411m. Capacity phases in: 96MW in December 2027, the balance by June 2028. A $573m interim facility from Morgan Stanley bridges construction pending an investment-grade financing.
The tenant question
Press reporting names Anthropic, sourced to people familiar with the deal. Neither company has confirmed it, and Riot's release is deliberately generic. Combined with a 50MW AMD lease signed at the same site in January, Rockdale now has roughly 241MW committed to AI.
Mining is now the smaller business
Riot reported second-quarter revenue of $174m, up 14% year on year, against a net loss of $237.2m. A single lease worth $9.1bn over its term dwarfs the mining operation that built the site — the power interconnection, not the hashrate, turned out to be the asset.
Two years to first power
Nothing is delivered until December 2027. The lease prices capacity that does not yet exist, which is now the normal shape of AI infrastructure contracts.
The financing is interim too
The $573m Morgan Stanley facility is explicitly a bridge, sized to carry construction until Riot refinances at investment grade. That takeout depends on the lease being treated as investment-grade credit, which depends on the strength of a counterparty Riot will not name.