Anthropic Reportedly Taps Former Bitcoin Miner IREN in Multiyear Cloud Deal
AI labs are no longer just fighting over data or chips. They are fighting over electricity, and former Bitcoin miners hold the keys.
Business · Source: Invezz
What happened
Anthropic reportedly signed an unannounced multiyear cloud deal with IREN. The Information identified the AI lab as the mystery customer IREN teased during its August earnings call. IREN shares jumped 5 percent in premarket trading following the news. The agreement deepens Anthropic's ties with a growing group of current and former Bitcoin mining companies.
The partnership highlights a massive shift in AI infrastructure. Anthropic is pushing its cloud partners to build data centers faster to meet computing demand. Bringing just one 245-megawatt site online a month early reportedly adds over 1.3 billion dollars in revenue for Anthropic. This potential revenue gain explains why frontier labs are rushing to secure capacity ahead of schedule. The deal is reportedly part of Anthropic's latest tranche of roughly 530 billion dollars in data center buildouts.
To get this power, AI companies are turning to unconventional sources. Operators like IREN, Hut 8, TeraWulf, and Nscale hold valuable grid connections at former smelter and hydrogen sites. IREN is aggressively repurposing its infrastructure to support artificial intelligence workloads. The company already delivered the first phase of a large-scale Microsoft deployment and secured Nvidia Exemplar Cloud status. They also recently secured 2.8 billion dollars in new financing to fund AI chip purchases.
Key facts
- $1.3 billion — Revenue Anthropic reportedly gains by bringing a 245 MW site online one month early
- $530 billion — Reported size of Anthropic's latest tranche of data center buildouts
- $128.8 million — IREN's AI cloud services revenue in fiscal 2026, an eightfold increase
- $4 billion — IREN's contracted annual recurring revenue for its largely sold-out 2026 capacity
- $2.8 billion — New financing IREN secured to help fund its AI chip purchases
Why it matters
Compute is useless without electricity. Frontier AI labs are hitting a physical bottleneck. They have the capital for GPUs, but they lack the grid connections to plug them in. Bitcoin miners spent years securing massive power lines in remote areas. Now, those power lines are the most valuable real estate in the AI industry. This marks a permanent shift in how AI infrastructure is built and scaled.
This changes the unit economics of the entire sector. IREN saw its AI cloud revenue jump nearly eightfold to 128.8 million dollars in fiscal 2026. The transition is not cheap. IREN took massive non-cash impairment charges of over 1 billion dollars just to decommission its old Bitcoin mining hardware. But the payoff is clear. Their 2026 capacity is largely sold out with 4 billion dollars in contracted annual recurring revenue. For builders, this means the cost of compute will increasingly reflect the cost of raw power and data center construction speed, not just silicon.
For builders
Power access is the ultimate moat
Startups building compute-heavy infrastructure must secure energy access first. If you rely on hyperscalers, expect costs to rise as they pay premiums to accelerate data center construction. The end user will ultimately pay for these expedited buildouts.
Repurposing legacy infrastructure pays off
There is massive capital available for converting industrial sites into AI data centers. Companies that can bridge the gap between legacy grid connections and modern liquid-cooled GPU deployments will win big contracts. Legacy infrastructure owners stand to profit immensely.
Cloud pricing is moving up
IREN reports stronger pricing and more attractive contract terms as demand outstrips supply. Builders should lock in compute contracts early before capacity constraints push market rates even higher. Those who wait will face compressed margins and delayed product launches.
My take
Everyone laughed at Bitcoin miners for wasting electricity. Now those same miners are the landlords of the AI revolution. I see frontier labs scrambling for megawatts because data and models do not matter if you cannot plug the servers in. Power is the only bottleneck that counts right now, and the companies controlling the grid connections are holding all the leverage.
Original reporting: Invezz. This is my rewrite and opinion.