Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude family of models, has signed a 20-year data center lease worth US$19 billion (approximately £15 billion) with TeraWulf, a former Bitcoin miner turned AI infrastructure developer, despite having never turned a profit.
The lease covers the Justified Data campus in Hawesville, Kentucky, a 320-hectare (approximately 790-acre) site built on the grounds of a former Century Aluminum smelter. The facility will deliver 401 megawatts of critical IT load when fully built, with initial capacity expected online in the second half of 2027 and full buildout by early 2028.
TeraWulf expects to invest between US$3 billion and US$4 billion (approximately £2.4-3.2 billion) in constructing the facility, less than one-fifth of the lease’s total value. The campus will use a closed-loop cooling system that recycles coolant rather than drawing from local water sources.
The Financial Architecture
Anthropic’s payment obligations under the lease are expected to be backed by an “investment-grade credit” structure, according to SEC filings made public Monday. The company has never generated a profit and relies entirely on continued capital raising to meet its commitments.
The company confidentially filed for an initial public offering in early June 2026, with a market debut anticipated in autumn 2026. The IPO is widely expected to test investor appetite for AI companies whose revenue growth has outpaced their ability to achieve profitability.
Analysts noted that Anthropic still needs to fill the facility with computing equipment, requiring additional capital beyond the US$19 billion lease commitment.
TeraWulf’s Transformation
For TeraWulf, the deal represents a definitive pivot from cryptocurrency mining to AI infrastructure. The company, which carried approximately US$5.8 billion (approximately £4.6 billion) in gross debt as of March 31, said the lease validates its strategic shift. Shares rose 17% on the announcement after falling 26% over the prior seven sessions.
In a related transaction, TeraWulf agreed to sell its 50.1% stake in the Abernathy data center joint venture in Texas to an investor group led by partner Fluidstack for approximately US$450-530 million (approximately £357-421 million), freeing capital for wholly owned AI projects.
TeraWulf CEO Paul Prager noted the timing: “When we announced the Justified Data campus acquisition in February, we told investors that we expected to secure a major customer commitment by around the end of the second quarter of 2026.”
Context in the AI Infrastructure Boom
Anthropic’s lease is one of the largest single-tenant data center deals in history, but analysts at The Register noted that the company’s exposure is “relatively small compared to the US$300 billion (approximately £238 billion) Oracle has committed to AI builds”, referencing Oracle’s own Stargate project disclosures detailing risks from its dependence on OpenAI’s ability to pay.
The deal comes amid intensifying scrutiny of AI infrastructure spending. The Bank for International Settlements warned this week that the AI buildout risks repeating historical patterns of overinvestment that characterized the railway mania of the 1800s and the dot-com bubble.
Sources: AI startup that’s never turned a profit says it’ll totally be around in 2047 to close its $19B lease (The Register, July 7); Anthropic inks $19B AI data center lease with TeraWulf (SiliconANGLE, July 6); SEC filings (July 2026)