Riot leases 910 MW to Anthropic for $28B at Corsicana

Riot Platforms has leased its entire 910 MW Corsicana campus in Texas to Anthropic for about $28 billion over 15 years, and because rent only starts as Riot hands over powered pads, the first money in this deal flows to the people who build substations and electrical gear, not to the landlord.

What happened?

• The lease: On 4 November 2026 Riot said it had signed a 15-year triple-net powered land lease for all of its Corsicana campus with what its release called a leading frontier AI lab. Riot's quarterly report, filed the same day, names the tenant as Anthropic. The lease was signed on 28 October and became binding on 4 November after board approval and sign-off of the site's technical specifications.
• The money: Riot puts total contract value at about $28 billion, with about $1.8 billion of average annual rent over the initial term, or about $54 billion if both five-year extensions are used. The filing sets base rent at $130 per kilowatt of critical IT capacity per month, rising 3% a year.
• The build: Capacity arrives in 40 blocks across three phases. Phase 1 is 400 MW, first block targeted for 28 June 2027 and the full phase for 11 September 2027. Phase 2 adds 200 MW by 28 January 2028. Phase 3 adds 310 MW, targeted for 30 July 2028.
• The scale: With an earlier 191 MW lease to the same tenant at Rockdale and its AMD contract there, Riot now has 1,151 MW leased and about $38 billion of contracted data center revenue. In the third quarter, its Data Center segment brought in $18.4 million.

Why does it matter?

The direct signal: the AI lab is renting power, not buildings. Under this structure Riot delivers the land, the grid connection, and the high- and medium-voltage infrastructure, and keeps owning and running it. Anthropic buys, installs, owns and operates the modular compute on top, and pays power as a pass-through. Rent is due on the full 910 MW whether or not it is used. Riot puts its capital cost at about $6 million per megawatt of IT capacity, which it says is about half a typical Tier 3 build. That is the market's clearest price yet for a powered pad on its own, with the data hall stripped out.

The second-order signal: the grid queue is the asset. Riot's filing says the Corsicana expansion was studied and approved by ERCOT under its earlier large-load process, is not part of the new Batch Zero study, and is classed as base load. That matters because Texas regulators adopted new large-load connection rules in September 2026, under which new loads of 75 MW or more post financial security of $50,000 per megawatt of requested demand and wait for portfolio studies. Our arithmetic: a new 910 MW request under those rules would need about $45.5 million of security before it was even studied. Riot skipped that line. For a deeper look at how power travels from the grid to the rack, see our data center power distribution explainer.

Who gets paid first. Riot will spend about $2 million per megawatt, or about $1.8 billion, on site work and electrical infrastructure before rent starts. Its Engineering segment, which makes custom electrical equipment, already booked $47.0 million of revenue in the third quarter, up from $19.1 million a year earlier, on outside data center demand. Transformer, switchgear and substation suppliers sit in front of the rent cheque on every block.

What does it change?

Near term (to mid-2027)

• Financing becomes the job. Riot also owes the tenant up to $4.0 million per megawatt, about $3.6 billion in total, to reimburse data center module costs, paid in phases after each phase is delivered and paying rent. Riot's deck shows two routes: non-recourse project debt of about $4.4 billion to $4.9 billion sized to the rent, leaving Riot about $0.5 billion to $1.1 billion of its own cash, or the tenant funds the modules and recovers them as rent credits. If Riot cannot get financing on acceptable market terms, the filing says those credits carry 12% a year interest.
• The miner's playbook changes at this site. Riot booked $24.7 million of power curtailment credits in the third quarter by switching off miners and reselling power. At Corsicana's leased premises it cannot curtail the tenant's load, except on utility or grid orders, or enrol in voluntary demand response without the tenant's consent.
• Riot is funding this without new shares, for now. It sold 20,264 bitcoin this year for about $1.5 billion, mostly to fund data center work, and ended September with $950.2 million in cash and bitcoin. It says it does not currently expect to issue equity for announced projects.

Longer term (2027 to 2028)

• Delivery dates carry penalties. If Riot is more than 60 days late, the tenant earns escalating rent credits, capped at 270 days of base rent for the late blocks. If a phase is not delivered within 270 days of its target date, the tenant can drop that phase on 30 days' notice, with extensions for force majeure of up to 365 days.
• The yield is only as good as the schedule. Our arithmetic: base rent of $130 per kilowatt per month on 910 MW comes to about $1.42 billion a year before escalators, and the $1.8 billion average over the term implies roughly a 33% unlevered yield on the $5.5 billion cost, matching Riot's own figure. Our GPU cluster acceptance explainer shows why the bill for a cluster starts only after the hardware passes its tests; here the clock starts even earlier, at the powered pad.

What should we watch next?

• 31 December 2026: Riot's $573 million delayed-draw loan for its 191 MW Rockdale project matures. Riot expects to repay it with long-term project financing. That take-out is the first public test of the project-debt route Corsicana also leans on.
• 2027, financing launch: the size, cost and lenders of the Corsicana project debt, and whether Riot or the tenant ends up funding the module reimbursements.
• 28 June 2027: the first Corsicana block is due. Phase 1, 400 MW, is due in full by 11 September 2027.
• Annual report for 2026: Riot says it will file the full Corsicana lease, with some parts redacted, as an exhibit to its 2026 Form 10-K.
• What would weaken the catalyst: slipping block dates that trigger rent credits, project debt priced so high that the 12% rent-credit route becomes the fallback, or grid curtailment orders that limit what the site can deliver. Upcoming dates sit on our Catalyst calendar, and the wider layer lives on our AI Data Centers stack page.

FAQ

Who is the tenant at Riot's Corsicana campus?

Riot's press release calls it a leading frontier AI lab. Its quarterly report filed with the SEC on 4 November names the tenant as Anthropic, the same tenant as its 191 MW Rockdale lease.

What is a powered land lease?

The landlord delivers land, the grid connection and the electrical infrastructure up to powered pads. The tenant brings, owns and runs the computing modules and pays for the power it uses. Riot says this costs about half as much per megawatt as building a full data hall.

When does Riot start earning rent at Corsicana?

Rent on each phase starts no later than 60 days after its powered pads are delivered. The first block is targeted for 28 June 2027 and the last for 30 July 2028.

What happens if Riot delivers late?

After 60 days late the tenant gets rent credits, capped at 270 days of base rent for the late blocks. After 270 days the tenant can cancel that phase, with extra time for force majeure.

Takeaway: Riot's $28 billion Corsicana lease prices grid-approved Texas power on its own at about $6 million per megawatt, and nothing gets paid to Riot until the electrical gear is in and the first pad goes live in June 2027.

References

1. Riot Platforms, Riot Platforms reports third quarter 2026 financial results and strategic highlights, 4 Nov 2026.
2. Riot Platforms, Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 September 2026, 4 Nov 2026.
3. Riot Platforms, Q3 2026 earnings deck (Form 8-K exhibit 99.2), 4 Nov 2026.
4. TeraWulf, TeraWulf secures Google credit backstop for project financing in support of $19 billion Anthropic lease, 4 Nov 2026.
5. Hut 8, Hut 8 reports third quarter 2026 results (Form 8-K exhibit 99.1), 4 Nov 2026.
6. Arm Holdings, Arm Holdings plc reports results for the second quarter of the fiscal year ending 2027, 4 Nov 2026.