SAN FRANCISCO, July 7, 2026, 01:21 PDT
- Anthropic signed a 20-year lease with TeraWulf NASDAQ:WULF worth $950 million a year for 401 MW, which comes to about $2.37 million per MW annually.
- Anthropic’s most recent valuation is about 20.5x its stated run-rate revenue. OpenAI’s last valuation is about 35.5x its $24 billion annualized sales figure.
- TeraWulf traded at $22.21 in the latest early U.S. quote, giving it a $9.4 billion market cap. The $19 billion lease is about double that market value.
Anthropic put a price on its AI expansion Monday, signing a 20-year, $19 billion lease with TeraWulf Inc. NASDAQ:WULF for 401 MW of compute power in Kentucky. The agreement gives investors an early look at what a leading AI lab is spending, ahead of Anthropic’s IPO filing.
TeraWulf said its Raylan Data business will supply capacity at the Justified Data campus in Hawesville, with the rollout set to start in late 2027 and continue into early 2028. Anthropic will begin paying rent as each space is delivered. The lease could last up to 30 years if Anthropic takes both five-year extensions.
| Anthropic-TeraWulf lease math | Number | Read-through for investors |
|---|---|---|
| Initial contracted revenue | $19 billion | Long-term AI demand is showing up in public filings |
| Term | 20 years | Works out to about $950 million per year before any renewal |
| Critical IT load | 401 MW | First term averages $47.4 million for each MW |
| Revenue per MW-year | $2.37 million | Sets a public number for AI hosting rates |
| Share of Anthropic’s disclosed 10 GW pacts with Amazon and Google/Broadcom | 4.0% | This lease is just a piece of the total planned capacity |
The IPO story is moving from user numbers to locked-in costs. Back in May, Anthropic reported run-rate revenue topping $47 billion and capacity deals for as much as 5 GW each with Amazon.com NASDAQ:AMZN and with Alphabet’s NASDAQ:GOOGL Google and Broadcom NASDAQ:AVGO. The TeraWulf lease adds up to about 2% of that $47 billion run-rate per year, not counting other spending on cloud, chips or data centers.
| Company | Latest valuation marker | Disclosed run-rate revenue | Sales multiple, based on disclosed run-rate | Public-market exposure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | $965 billion post-money | $47 billion | 20.5x | TeraWulf, Amazon.com, Alphabet, Microsoft NASDAQ:MSFT Azure |
| OpenAI | $852 billion post-money | $24 billion annualized, based on $2 billion monthly | 35.5x | Microsoft, Amazon.com, Nvidia NASDAQ:NVDA, Oracle NYSE:ORCL, CoreWeave NASDAQ:CRWV, Alphabet |
| OpenAI at Reuters-reported IPO target | Up to $1 trillion | $24 billion annualized | 41.7x | Same supplier and backer base |
OpenAI said back in March it finished a funding round that valued the company at $852 billion and said monthly revenue was $2 billion. In June, Reuters reported that OpenAI had filed confidentially for a U.S. IPO, eyeing a valuation as high as $1 trillion. OpenAI, though, said there was no timeline set, adding that “some things were easier as a private company.” OpenAI
Anthropic is first out. The company filed confidentially for a U.S. IPO on June 1 after raising $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation. Reuters quoted PitchBook senior analyst Harrison Rolfes saying Anthropic had “volunteered to absorb all the disclosure risk first.” Reuters
TeraWulf shares were up around 85% this year ahead of the Anthropic deal, according to Reuters. The company’s most recent market cap came in at $9.4 billion, which is less than half the value of its expected revenue from the Anthropic lease. That gap is one reason ex-bitcoin miners and data center stocks tied to AI are being used as stand-ins for private AI players. CoreWeave, another AI infrastructure firm, was last valued at $45.6 billion.
TeraWulf CEO Paul Prager called the lease a “long-duration revenue stream,” pointing to the company’s ability to source power and lock in extended customers. TeraWulf also moved to sell its 50.1% interest in the Abernathy joint venture to a group led by Fluidstack, monetizing a roughly $450 million investment. GlobeNewswire
There’s a risk public market investors will want to know if token-based revenue really covers the heavy compute costs. The Daily Upside said on Monday that big enterprise clients have started to question pay-per-use token bills and are looking for cheaper deal structures. Palantir Technologies NASDAQ:PLTR CEO Alex Karp told CNBC, “something has gone completely wrong,” per the outlet. The Daily Upside
D.A. Davidson’s Gil Luria told Reuters demand for capital from SpaceX NASDAQ:SPCX, OpenAI and Anthropic might cause “disruptions in the capital markets.” Kat Liu, vice president at IPOX, said Anthropic’s timing after SpaceX meant it was able to use a still-open window for AI names and growth stocks. Reuters
Trading listed suppliers is not the same as taking a run at the AI labs. Nvidia is selling the chips. Amazon.com, Alphabet, Microsoft and Oracle are moving cloud and compute. TeraWulf is offering data-center load with power supply. For an IPO, buyers take on the model shop itself, rolling up revenue growth, token pricing, depreciation, those big cloud bills and future capital calls into a single stock.
TeraWulf said Anthropic’s payments will be supported by an investment-grade credit, but rent kicks in only once capacity comes online. The first batch is set for the back half of 2027, with the complete 401 MW on track by early 2028.
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