November 06, 2026 – Riot’s 910 MW deal at Corsicana swaps flexible mining income for 15 years of fixed rent. The fine print hands Anthropic a veto over voluntary power cuts.
In Summary
Riot’s 10-Q names Anthropic PBC as the tenant for 910 MW at Corsicana, Texas, binding since Nov. 4.
Riot cannot curtail Anthropic’s load or join voluntary demand response without the tenant’s consent.
Curtailment credits reached $24.7 million in the third quarter and $55.7 million over nine months.
Riot shares fell 3.3% to $14.87 on Nov. 5 as AI infrastructure stocks sold off.
Riot Platforms has given up one of a bitcoin miner’s best tools. Its new Anthropic lease at Corsicana, Texas, bars Riot from cutting the tenant’s power without consent. The deal became binding on Nov. 4, according to Riot’s third-quarter Form 10-Q.
Riot’s filing names Anthropic PBC as the “Frontier AI Lab” behind the deal. The lease covers 910 megawatts (MW) of critical IT capacity. However, none of that capacity runs yet. Riot plans to deliver it in three phases through July 2028.
What the Anthropic lease pays
Anthropic will pay base rent of $130 per kilowatt each month, rising 3% a year. Riot’s earnings presentation puts the initial contract value near $28 billion. Two five-year extensions could lift that to about $54 billion. Meanwhile, average annual rent comes to roughly $1.8 billion.
The lease is triple net. So Anthropic pays for power, taxes, insurance and site costs. Riot builds the pads and owns the high-voltage gear. In addition, rent applies to all 910 MW, whether or not Anthropic uses it.
The power cut veto
The key clause sits in the Anthropic lease note. Without Anthropic’s consent, Riot “may not curtail” the tenant’s load. Nor can it enroll the site in voluntary demand response programs. Mandatory orders from the utility or grid operator still apply.
That matters because cutting power pays Riot today. The company earned $24.7 million in power curtailment credits in the third quarter. That was down from $30.6 million a year earlier. Over nine months, though, credits rose to $55.7 million from $46.7 million.
Most of that came from manual curtailment. Demand response added just $1.7 million in the quarter. Riot also sells unused power back at its Rockdale site and joins programs run by ERCOT, the Texas grid operator. At Corsicana, that freedom now needs a tenant’s approval.
Rent replaces bitcoin as the engine
The shift already shows in Riot’s quarterly results. Total revenue reached $181.4 million, up 1% from a year earlier. Bitcoin mining revenue fell to $116.0 million from $160.8 million. By contrast, data center revenue reached $18.4 million, helped by a full quarter of AMD’s stabilized 25 MW.
Riot also sold 20,264 bitcoin this year for about $1.5 billion to fund construction. It ended September with $950.2 million in cash and bitcoin. Still, Corsicana needs about $5.5 billion in hard costs. That includes up to $4 million per MW in module costs that Riot refunds to Anthropic.
If Riot cannot finance those refunds on fair terms, it pays through rent credits instead. Those credits carry 12% annual interest over the rest of the term. As a result, cheap debt sits at the heart of the deal’s expected returns.
Delay penalties and the market
The Anthropic lease also loads delivery risk onto Riot. Capacity that arrives more than 60 days late earns Anthropic rising rent credits, capped at 270 days of base rent. After 270 days, Anthropic can drop the late phase on 30 days’ notice.
Investors stayed cautious. Riot shares fell 3.3% to $14.87 on Nov. 5 as a broad sell-off hit AI infrastructure stocks. The stock now trades near the low end of its 52-week range of $11.50 to $30.32.
For now, the Anthropic lease trade looks clear. Riot gives up flexible, grid-friendly mining income for 15 years of fixed rent. In return, its largest planned campus loses the off switch that made miners useful to the Texas grid. Riot disclosed the lease alongside results in a Nov. 4 Form 8-K.
