Bitcoin Miners Discover Electricity Was the Real Product All Along ⚡

TeraWulf (WULF) has signed a 20-year lease with Anthropic for a purpose-built AI data center campus at its Justified Data site in Hawesville, Kentucky, a deal the Bitcoin miner said is expected to generate approximately $19 billion in contract revenue. Shares of TeraWulf spiked on the announcement, recently trading at $24.05 for a roughly 14% intraday gain, and the move lifted shares across the Bitcoin mining sector as IREN rose more than 13%, Hut 8 climbed 12%, Cipher Digital gained 11%, and Keel Infrastructure, formerly Bitfarms, advanced 10% after exiting Bitcoin mining entirely to focus on AI. The campus is designed to support about 401 megawatts of computing capacity, with the first phase slated to come online in the second half of 2027 and full buildout targeted for early 2028. TeraWulf said the lease is expected to be supported by an investment-grade credit rating.

TeraWulf Chairman and CEO Paul Prager said in a statement, "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." Prager also told CNBC, "The Anthropic lease validates our strategy and establishes a long-duration revenue stream with one of the world's leading AI companies." Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude chatbot, is among several major model developers racing to secure long-term power and data center capacity as it scales up its systems.

In a separate transaction announced Monday, TeraWulf agreed to sell its 50.1% stake in the Abernathy Joint Venture, a Texas data center project developed with partner Fluidstack, to an investor group led by Fluidstack. TeraWulf said the sale monetizes its roughly $450 million investment at a premium to invested capital, with Fluidstack taking over leadership of the project going forward. The Maryland-based company said proceeds will be reinvested in wholly owned AI infrastructure projects.

The pivot comes as demand for AI computing outpaces available capacity, drawing Bitcoin miners with existing grid connections, power agreements and large industrial sites into the high-performance computing market. Blocksbridge Consulting estimated in June that public Bitcoin miners pursuing AI infrastructure may need roughly $50 billion in near-term capital, as AI data centers require far greater investment than traditional mining facilities. Last month, HIVE Digital signed a three-year, $220 million agreement to provide GPU cloud infrastructure for AI startup Cohere through Bell Canada's AI Fabric, while IREN acquired Spanish data center developer Nostrum Group, adding about 490 MW of secured, grid-connected power.