By William Gavin

The deal 'validates' the crypto-mining company's pivot to supporting the AI buildout, its CEO says

Anthropic has made billions of dollars' worth of commitments to expand its access to artificial-intelligence computing power.

TeraWulf's stock is surging after Anthropic agreed to a 20-year lease to use the company's data center in Kentucky.

The company said the campus, located in Hawesville, would provide about 401 megawatts of capacity for the artificial-intelligence lab. Initial capacity is set for the second half of 2027, with a full ramp up planned by early 2028.

TeraWulf said it had acquired the Hawesville site, a former Century Aluminum facility, in February. The complex has about 480 MW of existing power availability, and that could be expanded over time, TeraWulf said.

TeraWulf's lease to Anthropic is set to generate some $19 billion worth of contracted revenue over the length of the deal. TeraWulf also said it plans to "further expand" its relationship with the maker of the Claude model, which like other hyperscalers is hungry for AI computing power.

"The Anthropic lease validates our strategy and establishes a long-duration revenue stream with one of the world's leading AI companies," TeraWulf CEO Paul Prager said in a statement.

Separately, TeraWulf said it would sell its majority stake in a joint venture developing a data-center complex in Abernathy, Texas, to a group led by its partner, the neocloud startup Fluidstack. Anthropic last year tapped Fluidstack to build custom data centers in New York and Texas as part of a $50 billion deal.

TeraWulf's stock (WULF) rose 17% in early trading on Monday. Shares have jumped more than 80% so far in 2026 as the company has pivoted from focusing primarily on mining bitcoin to supporting the AI boom.

Peer neocloud stocks are also up on Monday after seeing some pressure last week after reports that Meta Platforms (META) was planning its own cloud-computing business. CoreWeave's stock (CRWV) rose 5%, Iren shares (IREN) jumped 14% and Hut 8's stock (HUT) climbed 11% in early trading.

-William Gavin

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