Shares of Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms rose more than 13% on Wednesday after the company announced a 15-year lease for 910 megawatts of data center capacity at its Corsicana, Texas, site. The agreement is valued at $28 billion and is Riot’s largest AI infrastructure deal to date.
The lease brings Riot’s expected future data center revenue to about $38 billion across three agreements signed this year. The company said it will supply land and power infrastructure originally developed for Bitcoin mining. The tenant, identified as Anthropic in Riot’s quarterly filing, will own and operate the computing equipment and pay operating expenses.
Riot estimates the project will require $5.5 billion in capital costs, expected to be financed mainly with debt backed by lease payments. That financing has not yet been secured. The first phase is scheduled for delivery in September 2027, with rent due within 60 days of delivery.
Riot reported third-quarter revenue of $181.4 million, up 1% year over year, and said it sold 10,599 Bitcoin during the quarter to help fund its data center expansion. CEO Jason Les said the company could begin winding down Bitcoin mining at Corsicana in summer 2027. He added that, once the deals currently in place are fully deployed, long-term AI ecosystem leases are expected to generate nearly all of Riot’s cash flow.
Shares of Hut 8, another Bitcoin miner pursuing AI infrastructure, fell more than 22% at one point on Wednesday after its quarterly revenue missed analysts’ estimates. Revenue dropped 15% to $71.1 million, below the $75.8 million forecast cited by MarketBeat. CFO Sean Glennan attributed the decline partly to asset sales and lower revenue per Bitcoin mined, while cash administrative expenses increased year over year.
Hut 8 said it has secured $7.5 billion in project bonds to finance two major AI data center developments. Neither project has begun generating lease revenue, with contracted infrastructure income still dependent on delivery milestones.
Sources: Cointelegraph.