Business 3 min read By Arthur Ellington
Anthropic commits $3.4 billion to gas-fired power for its AI data centers
The AI company has agreed to buy 1.7 gigawatts of heavy-duty gas generators, the largest direct power-equipment investment by an AI firm, as it prepares a public listing.
Anthropic has committed $3.4 billion to gas-fired power generators in a deal that the Financial Times describes as the largest direct power-equipment investment by an artificial intelligence company. The agreement covers 1.7 gigawatts of heavy-duty gas generators supplied by OnePWR Solutions, a San Antonio equipment supplier, and is intended to secure the electricity that the company's computing operations will require as demand grows.
Under the arrangement, Anthropic takes over generator commitments that OnePWR had made with Caterpillar. The package also includes engineering and construction work to install the equipment. The generators are expected to become available within about two years. Piper Sandler disclosed that it advised on the transaction. Neither Anthropic nor OnePWR responded to requests for comment.
The purchase comes as the company prepares to go public. Anthropic filed a registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in September, and reported figures indicate a target valuation of about $1.3 trillion, with 825 million shares offered at a price range of $70 to $78. The filing sets out a large spending plan, with aggregate committed compute and infrastructure spending of roughly $900.9 billion. About $451.6 billion is expected to be spent before 2030, most of the remainder running to 2045. Around $70.7 billion falls due within 12 months after September 30.
The company's infrastructure strategy, which it calls Anthropic Direct, involves leasing chips and placing them in dedicated data centers. Its current compute suppliers include Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Nvidia and AMD. The move into owned power generation reflects a wider problem across the sector: the difficulty of obtaining electricity at the scale that large AI models demand.
The filing identifies several risks linked to the gas strategy. It warns that natural gas prices can be volatile and that supply may be constrained, and it notes competition for gas supply and pipeline capacity. It also says power equipment carries multi-year procurement lead times, and that the company may have to pay above-market prices for long-lead power generation. Those warnings suggest the purchase is as much about certainty of supply as about cost.
Other technology groups are pursuing similar routes. Alphabet agreed to buy Intersect Power for $4.75 billion. xAI uses gas turbines to run its Colossus data centers in Tennessee and Mississippi. Meta is pursuing on-site gas generation in Ohio with Williams, a project valued at about $1.6 billion. Elsewhere, Microsoft has reportedly agreed a nuclear power deal with Constellation valued at $16 billion, and Amazon is developing a nuclear-powered campus in Pennsylvania with Talen. Taken together, the deals show AI companies moving from buying electricity on the grid towards securing their own generation capacity.
Source: fortune.com
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