Story perspectives

Riot Signs $9.1 B AI Lease, Shares Surge 25%

8/12/2026

Summary

Story summary

Riot Platforms signed a 20-year, $9.1 billion lease with AI firm Anthropic PBC for 191 MW at its Rockdale, Texas campus, running through June 2048.
Riot will bring 96 MW online by Dec 2027 and the full 191 MW by Jun 2028.
Shares jumped about 25 percent in after-hours trading on Aug 10, 2026, to $24.40, a move that analysts say reflects AI colocation now accounting for roughly 84 percent of Riot’s enterprise value.

History

Historical Context

In 2019 Microsoft pledged a $1 billion investment to OpenAI, securing exclusive cloud hosting on Azure and catalyzing corporate AI-compute partnerships. The deal allocated 120 MW of data-center capacity in Seattle, projected to generate $300 million annual revenue for Microsoft’s cloud division by 2023. Riot Platforms’ 2026 20-year, $9.1 billion lease with Anthropic in Rockdale, Texas mirrors Microsoft’s strategic model, shifting enterprise value toward AI colocation. The precedent suggests that future data-center contracts will increasingly dictate stock performance, prompting investors to prioritize AI-infrastructure exposure in the market.

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Story summary

Riot Platforms signed a 20-year, $9.1 billion lease with AI firm Anthropic PBC for 191 MW at its Rockdale, Texas campus, running through June 2048.
Riot will bring 96 MW online by Dec 2027 and the full 191 MW by Jun 2028.
Shares jumped about 25 percent in after-hours trading on Aug 10, 2026, to $24.40, a move that analysts say reflects AI colocation now accounting for roughly 84 percent of Riot’s enterprise value.

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