Bitcoin miners face a new rival for cheap power as Anthropic signs multi-gigawatt compute deal

Anthropic said it has partnered with Google and Broadcom to secure multiple gigawatts of next-generation TPU compute capacity, with capacity expected to come online starting in 2027. The company described the commitment as its most significant to date, as revenue growth accelerated to a 30 billion USD annual run rate from 9 billion USD at the end of 2025.

Deal expands frontier-model compute

Anthropic said the agreement with Google and Broadcom will provide multiple gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity to train and serve its frontier Claude models.

AI compute demand competes with bitcoin mining

The company’s announcement comes as AI compute demand increasingly competes with bitcoin mining for the same limited resources, including grid connections, land permits, cooling infrastructure, and cheap electricity. The article notes that AI is now one of the largest new sources of U.S. power demand.

A Cambridge tracker estimate cited in the article suggests bitcoin mining draws roughly 13 to 25 gigawatts of continuous power globally, depending on hardware efficiency assumptions.

Scale signals AI’s growing share of energy infrastructure

Anthropic’s multi-gigawatt TPU commitment is described as adding to existing compute capacity across AWS Trainium, Google TPUs, and Nvidia GPUs. The article frames this as evidence that AI is becoming a peer-level competitor for the same energy infrastructure miners rely on.

Broader shift across the AI and crypto sectors

The article contrasts Anthropic’s partnership with OpenAI’s approach, noting that OpenAI raised 122 billion last week and described compute as a strategic moat. It adds that OpenAI is building across an infrastructure portfolio spanning five cloud providers and four chip platforms.

It also describes how bitcoin miners are responding to the economics of the current cycle. Core Scientific converted a significant portion of its mining capacity to AI hosting through a deal with CoreWeave. Iris Energy and Hut 8 have expanded AI and high-performance computing revenue. Riot Platforms, MARA Holdings, and Genius Group disclosed selling more than 19,000 BTC from their treasuries last week, which the article says signals that mining economics alone are not sustaining operations at current prices and difficulty levels.

Why AI rentals may be more predictable

The article compares revenue dynamics for miners and AI infrastructure providers. It says a bitcoin miner running a gigawatt of capacity earns revenue that fluctuates with bitcoin’s price and network difficulty. By contrast, it says renting the same gigawatt to an AI company can generate a contracted rate with more predictable cash flows.

It also cites conditions including bitcoin at 69,000 USD, difficulty at all-time highs, and rising energy costs across industrial consumers competing for grid capacity, arguing that AI rental often pays better under those circumstances.

Customer growth and revenue momentum

Anthropic said the number of business customers spending more than 1 million USD annually on Claude doubled from 500 to over 1,000 in less than two months, according to the article.

Mining continues, but business models may shift

The article states that the network hashrate continues to hit record levels above 1 zetahash per second, adding that bitcoin mining is not necessarily “dying.” However, it suggests that miners that survive the current cycle may increasingly resemble infrastructure providers that mine bitcoin on the side while renting their assets—particularly cheap power at scale—to an AI industry that, according to the article, cannot build data centers fast enough.