Anthropic Signs 20-Year, $19B Lease With Bitcoin Miner TeraWulf

Anthropic signed a 20-year lease on Monday with bitcoin miner TeraWulf for roughly 401 megawatts of capacity at TeraWulf’s Justified Data campus in Hawesville, Kentucky, a deal the miner says will generate about $19 billion in contracted revenue over the initial term. TeraWulf shares surged more than 17% in morning trading on the announcement before closing up 4.9% as some of the initial enthusiasm faded, snapping a seven-session losing streak.

Anthropic had already committed to renting more than 10 gigawatts of compute from cloud providers before the TeraWulf deal. The 20-year Hawesville lease makes a former bitcoin miner the latest non-traditional host on that map.

The Lease at Hawesville

TeraWulf’s subsidiary Raylan Data LLC will lease the campus to Anthropic PBC for a 20-year initial term beginning when the first phase delivers, expected in the second half of 2027, with the campus ramping to the full 401 MW by early 2028. The contract carries an option for Anthropic to extend for up to an additional ten years through two successive five-year renewals. Rent obligations are expected to be backed by an investment-grade credit. The deal is the first anchor tenant at the Justified Data campus, the centerpiece of TeraWulf’s strategic pivot from bitcoin mining to AI infrastructure hosting.

The deal makes the Justified Data campus TeraWulf’s first anchor-tenanted AI site. The full terms and delivery schedule are spelled out in the company’s July 6 Form 8-K filing with the Justified Data campus lease and Abernathy sale with the SEC. Hawesville sits about an hour southwest of Louisville, and the campus carries roughly 480 MW of existing power availability that TeraWulf says can be expanded over time.

TeraWulf CEO Paul Prager framed the contract as the validation of a strategy that began with the February acquisition of the Hawesville site. The Anthropic lease is the company’s first anchor tenant at Justified Data and is structured to backstop TeraWulf’s transition out of bitcoin mining as its primary business. The deal is supported by investment-grade credit and includes a renewal option that could stretch the rent stream to 30 years. In the press release, Prager said the agreement demonstrates TeraWulf’s ability to source power, develop infrastructure, and secure long-term customer commitments. Prager’s statement connects the February Hawesville acquisition to the kind of anchor tenant the company has been pursuing.

The Anthropic lease validates our strategy and establishes a long-duration revenue stream with one of the world’s leading AI companies. The lease provides approximately $19 billion of contracted lease revenue over its initial term, creates a framework for future expansion, and demonstrates the value of our ability to source power, develop infrastructure, and secure long-term customer commitments.

Prager, Chairman and CEO of TeraWulf, said in a statement accompanying the lease announcement on Monday.

WULF Gives Back Most of Its Morning Jump

TeraWulf shares opened sharply higher on Monday after CNBC reported the bitcoin miner’s stock had soared more than 16% in premarket trading on the Anthropic deal news. Per MarketWatch coverage cited by Morningstar, the morning low-to-high move was even larger: shares surged more than 17% before sellers stepped in. By the close, the stock was up 4.9%, snapping a seven-session losing streak, per MarketWatch. The intraday reversal left the stock well off its morning peak but well above where it started the day. As of the previous close, TeraWulf shares had gained about 85% year to date, per the Reuters wire; CNBC’s reporting on Monday put the year-to-date gain at “more than 80%.” Peer neocloud stocks joined the move: CoreWeave (CRWV) rose 5%, Iren (IREN) jumped 14%, and Hut 8 (HUT) climbed 11% in early trading, per MarketWatch.

Each peer had come under pressure the prior week on reports that Meta Platforms was building its own cloud-computing business. The Anthropic deal lifted the entire neocloud basket on Monday. The lease covers a campus TeraWulf acquired in February for $200 million, and the rent clock starts only when the campus delivers.

The Abernathy Exit and What It Funds

On the same morning, TeraWulf announced it had agreed to sell its 50.1% ownership interest in the Abernathy joint venture to an investor group led by its joint venture partner Fluidstack. The 8-K discloses an aggregate consideration of approximately $530 million for the stake. Payment comes in three installments: $250 million within 14 days of execution, $150 million on or before December 31, 2026, and approximately $130 million, subject to certain adjustments, on or before April 30, 2027. TeraWulf framed the sale as part of a broader capital reallocation toward wholly owned AI infrastructure.

The Abernathy transaction monetizes TeraWulf’s approximately $450 million investment in the joint venture at a premium to invested capital, the company said. The premium is the commercial point of the exit: TeraWulf put roughly $450 million into the joint venture and is now set to receive $530 million across three scheduled payments. The 168 MW Abernathy site in Texas, formed in October 2025 between TeraWulf and Fluidstack with Google backing, sits on a 120-acre campus. Fluidstack, the buyer of TeraWulf’s stake, remains the operator of the Texas campus and a customer of TeraWulf’s New York site outside Buffalo, per Data Center Dynamics. Google continues to backstop the Fluidstack-TeraWulf relationship, per the same reporting.

The sale of our ownership interest in Abernathy to a group led by Fluidstack crystallizes the value created through that investment and generates significant capital for redeployment into infrastructure platforms where we maintain direct ownership, customer relationships, and operational control.

Prager, Chairman and CEO of TeraWulf, said in the company’s July 6 press release. TeraWulf framed the joint venture exit as a way to align the company’s capital with infrastructure platforms where it maintains direct ownership, customer relationships, and operational control.

From Bitcoin Miner to AI Infrastructure Landlord

The Hawesville site that now anchors the Anthropic lease was a Century Aluminum smelter until TeraWulf acquired it in February for $200 million. Per TeraWulf’s reporting cited by MarketWatch, the complex carries roughly 480 MW of existing power availability, expandable over time. That power footprint explains why an AI landlord found a former metals site attractive: power, not square footage, is the binding constraint for high-performance compute. A couple of months after the Hawesville acquisition, TeraWulf purchased a second Kentucky site for a gigawatt-scale campus, per Data Center Dynamics. That gives TeraWulf control of a multi-site footprint rather than a single converted building. Local officials told WFIE the project is expected to bring 100 to 120 high-paying jobs to Hancock County. The pivot that put TeraWulf on the AI infrastructure map began as a deliberate move by Prager’s team to repurpose bitcoin mining capacity for AI compute.

That thesis now has a 401-megawatt anchor tenant. On Monday, peer neocloud stocks CoreWeave (CRWV) rose 5%, Iren (IREN) jumped 14%, and Hut 8 (HUT) climbed 11% in early trading, per MarketWatch. Per the 8-K, Anthropic’s payment obligations begin only when the campus is delivered, so the rent clock starts in the second half of 2027.

Anthropic’s Compute Map Reaches Far Past the Hyperscalers

The TeraWulf lease arrives as one more entry on an Anthropic compute map that already extends well beyond the major cloud providers. Data Center Dynamics reports that Anthropic has committed to renting more than 10 GW of servers from cloud providers to date. The largest piece of that stack is a $200 billion agreement signed with Google, per Data Center Dynamics. Anthropic has signed a data center lease with SpaceX/xAI covering the entire Colossus 1 data center in a deal worth $1.25 billion a month, per Data Center Dynamics.

Anthropic previously signed a $50 billion partnership with AI cloud firm Fluidstack and committed more than $100 billion to AWS in April for training and running its Claude agent, per CNN. Fluidstack, the buyer of TeraWulf’s Abernathy stake, is already a major customer of TeraWulf’s New York campus outside Buffalo, with that capacity flowing to Anthropic and Google backstopping the Fluidstack-TeraWulf arrangement, per Data Center Dynamics.

Anthropic’s compute strategy now runs through purpose-built campuses as well as cloud providers. Anthropic had confidentially filed plans for an initial public offering that could value the company in the trillion-dollar range, per Anthropic’s confidential IPO filing and trillion-dollar valuation track. The filing came a week before OpenAI’s confidential S-1 filing a week behind Anthropic, a competitive sequencing noted at the time. Anthropic’s valuation rose from $380 billion in February to $965 billion in May per CNN. Per Yahoo Finance/Stocktwits, the projected initial-term revenue is nearly 113 times the $168.5 million TeraWulf reported in fiscal year 2025.

Anthropic now counts SpaceX, Fluidstack, and TeraWulf among its long-term campus hosts, alongside its cloud commitments. Each of those contracts is measured in decades rather than months. TeraWulf says it plans to “further expand” its relationship with Anthropic, per MarketWatch, an indication that the Hawesville campus is a first phase rather than a one-off.

What the Lease Doesn’t Yet Answer

Three uncertainties hang over the contract even before the first kilowatt flows. TeraWulf has no operating AI data center today; the campus is being developed in phases, and any delay in power delivery or construction would push back the start of rent. The 8-K puts initial capacity in the second half of 2027 and full ramp by early 2028, but high-performance compute campuses have a history of slipping those dates. The deal also concentrates risk on a single tenant: nearly all of the campus’s revenue depends on Anthropic’s continued appetite for compute at this site and this scale. TeraWulf’s pivot from bitcoin mining was framed as a strategy of owning infrastructure directly, and the Anthropic lease is the test of whether that strategy translates into recurring rent at the projected scale. The Abernathy exit adds up to $530 million of capital across three installments, with $250 million arriving within 14 days of execution.

The credit support helps, but only partially. Anthropic’s payment obligations are expected to be backed by an investment-grade credit, the 8-K says, which reduces counterparty risk. TeraWulf still must build and energize the campus on schedule and at the cost it has projected, with the Abernathy proceeds funding only part of that work.

The first phase’s delivery in the second half of 2027 is the next concrete milestone TeraWulf has set for the deal. Until then, the Anthropic lease is a 20-year contract on paper and a former smelter on the ground in Hawesville.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Anthropic-TeraWulf Deal?

On Monday, July 6, 2026, TeraWulf disclosed through a Form 8-K filing that its Raylan Data LLC subsidiary had signed a 20-year lease with Anthropic PBC covering approximately 401 MW of critical IT load at the Justified Data campus in Hawesville, Kentucky.

How Much Is the Lease Worth and Over What Term?

TeraWulf says the lease is expected to generate approximately $19 billion in contracted revenue over its initial 20-year term. Anthropic holds an option to extend the term for up to an additional ten years via two successive five-year renewals.

What Is TeraWulf’s Justified Data Campus?

Justified Data is a campus in Hawesville, Kentucky, on the site of a former Century Aluminum smelter that TeraWulf acquired in February 2026 for $200 million. The complex carries roughly 480 MW of existing power availability, expandable over time, and is being developed in phases, with initial capacity expected in the second half of 2027.

How Did WULF Stock React on Monday?

TeraWulf shares opened sharply higher on Monday after the deal was announced, surged more than 17% in morning trading, and closed up 4.9%, snapping a seven-session losing streak. The neocloud basket moved with it: CoreWeave added 5%, Iren 14%, and Hut 8 11%.

Where Does This Fit Anthropic’s Broader Compute Strategy?

The TeraWulf lease extends an Anthropic compute map that already includes more than 10 GW of cloud commitments, a $200 billion Google agreement, a $100+ billion AWS commitment, a $50 billion Fluidstack partnership, and a SpaceX/xAI Colossus 1 lease worth $1.25 billion per month. The TeraWulf deal is the first major purpose-built AI campus anchor with a former bitcoin miner.