Anthropic Signs $19 Billion, 20-Year Lease With TeraWulf for a 401 MW Kentucky AI Data Center
TeraWulf will lease Anthropic a 401 MW AI campus in Hawesville, Kentucky, for about $19 billion over 20 years, while selling its Abernathy Joint Venture stake to Fluidstack.
Overview
TeraWulf has executed a 20-year lease agreement with Anthropic for a purpose-built AI infrastructure campus in Hawesville, Kentucky, a deal the company says is expected to generate approximately $19 billion of contracted revenue over the initial lease term, according to TeraWulf’s official announcement. The agreement, disclosed July 6, was confirmed independently by SiliconANGLE and Data Center Dynamics.
What We Know
The campus, known as the Justified Data site, will accommodate approximately 401 MW of critical IT load and will be developed in multiple phases, according to TeraWulf’s announcement. Initial capacity is expected to be placed into service during the second half of 2027, with the campus ramping to the full 401 MW by early 2028, the company said. TeraWulf added that the lease is expected to be supported by an investment-grade credit.
The data center is being built on the site of a former aluminum smelting facility in Hawesville, according to SiliconANGLE. Data Center Dynamics reported that the property was formerly used as an aluminum processing site and was sold to TeraWulf in February for $200 million.
Paul Prager, TeraWulf’s chairman and chief executive officer, said in the announcement that “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. The timing of today’s announcement reflects the completion of final documentation and customary transaction processes, and we are proud to announce this landmark partnership with Anthropic,” according to TeraWulf. Prager also said “the Anthropic lease validates our strategy and establishes a long-duration revenue stream with one of the world’s leading AI companies,” a statement also carried by Data Center Dynamics.
Alongside the Anthropic lease, TeraWulf entered into a definitive agreement to sell its 50.1% ownership interest in the Abernathy Joint Venture to an investor group led by its joint venture partner, Fluidstack, according to TeraWulf’s announcement. The company said the transaction monetizes its approximately $450 million investment at a premium to invested capital. The Abernathy Joint Venture was established in 2025 to develop a 168 MW critical IT load AI data center campus in Abernathy, Texas, TeraWulf said. CoinDesk reported that TeraWulf is selling its entire stake in the venture for about $530 million.
TeraWulf shares jumped as much as 19% on the day of the announcement before settling to a gain of about 4%, according to CoinDesk, while SiliconANGLE put the day’s close at a 4.8% gain. TeraWulf carries a market value around $12 billion, according to CoinDesk, and posted $34 million in revenue last quarter, according to SiliconANGLE.
TeraWulf’s shift mirrors a broader trend among cryptocurrency miners repurposing power capacity for AI hosting. CoinDesk reported that, as of March 2026, bitcoin miners had sold more than 15,000 coins from peak holdings and signed over $70 billion in AI computing contracts.
What We Don’t Know
TeraWulf’s announcement did not disclose the exact sale price of its Abernathy Joint Venture stake, describing it only as a premium to its $450 million investment; the $530 million figure comes from CoinDesk’s reporting rather than the company’s own statement. Neither TeraWulf nor the cited reports specified which of Anthropic’s workloads — training, inference, or a mix — the Hawesville campus will support, or the exact amount of power expected to be online when the “initial capacity” phase begins in the second half of 2027.
Analysis
The deal extends a pattern in which AI developers are locking in long-duration, investment-grade-backed power and compute commitments with infrastructure operators that originated in cryptocurrency mining, where cheap power sites and grid interconnections built for one purpose are being redirected toward AI data centers. For TeraWulf, the transaction pairs a two-decade revenue stream from a single tenant with an exit from a joint-venture structure, concentrating its capital in wholly owned campuses where it retains direct control over customer relationships and operations, per TeraWulf’s own statement.