TeraWulf signed a $19 billion multi-year lease with Anthropic to operate a brownfield AI campus, marking the largest AI infrastructure contract to date.
TeraWulf has signed a 20-year, $19 billion lease with Anthropic for approximately 401 MW of critical IT capacity at its Justified Data campus in Hawesville, Kentucky—one of the largest dedicated AI infrastructure leases to date. The agreement is expected to generate approximately $19 billion in contracted revenue over its initial 20-year term, with initial capacity entering service in the second half of 2027 and the full 401-MW deployment expected by early 2028. Anthropic's payment obligations are expected to receive investment-grade credit support.
Simultaneously, TeraWulf is selling its 50.1% stake in the 168-MW Abernathy data center joint venture in Texas to a group led by Fluidstack, TeraWulf's partner in that project. These paired transactions represent a deliberate strategic shift: TeraWulf is exchanging a majority position in a jointly controlled development for a direct, long-duration relationship with a leading AI model developer at a campus it will own, develop and operate.
The Anthropic agreement validates what TeraWulf management signaled when announcing the Justified Data acquisition in February 2026. "When we announced the campus acquisition, we told investors that we expected to secure a major customer commitment by around the end of the second quarter of 2026," said Paul Prager, TeraWulf's Chairman and CEO. "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."
Justified Data occupies the site of the former Century Aluminum smelter in Hawesville, a small Ohio River community in western Kentucky. TeraWulf paid $200 million in cash for the former industrial property and granted the seller a 6.8% non-dilutive minority interest in the development subsidiary, bringing total acquisition consideration to approximately $301.9 million. The property spans more than 250 buildable acres and includes multiple high-voltage transmission lines, an energized onsite substation and direct access to the regional transmission system. During its industrial operating life, the site consumed approximately 480 MW continuously. Rather than starting with raw greenfield acreage and waiting years for new transmission facilities, TeraWulf acquired a location where the electrical infrastructure required for hyperscale AI deployment was already substantially present.
The campus will develop in phases, with initial delivery during the second half of 2027 and full 401-MW ramp by early 2028. The lease includes two successive five-year renewal options, potentially extending Anthropic's occupancy to 30 years, with rent beginning as each portion of the leased premises is delivered.
Anthropic, best known for Claude, its family of large language models and AI assistants, requires increasingly large clusters of accelerators, high-performance networking and specialized cooling infrastructure for model training and inference. In 2025, the company announced plans to invest $50 billion in American computing infrastructure, including purpose-built data centers developed with Fluidstack in Texas and New York. The Justified Data lease broadens that strategy by establishing a direct, long-term relationship with TeraWulf at a separate Kentucky campus.
The transaction illustrates the increasingly intricate network of relationships connecting AI model companies, neocloud providers, data center developers, infrastructure investors and large technology companies. Fluidstack is a tenant and development partner at several TeraWulf projects. Google has provided financial backing for portions of Fluidstack's infrastructure commitments and has received an equity interest in TeraWulf through warrants. Anthropic has identified Fluidstack as a development partner for other U.S. infrastructure investments. At Justified Data, however, TeraWulf is emphasizing that it will maintain a direct customer relationship with Anthropic.
TeraWulf's decision to divest Abernathy reflects CEO Prager's stated strategy: owning and operating critical infrastructure, maintaining direct customer relationships and controlling the long-term evolution of its campuses. "The Anthropic lease validates our strategy and establishes a long-duration revenue stream with one of the world's leading AI companies," he said.
TeraWulf and Fluidstack created the Abernathy venture in 2025 to develop a 168-MW critical IT load campus on approximately 120 acres near Abernathy, Texas, with total utility requirements of approximately 240 MW. Fluidstack committed to a 25-year lease, with Google providing approximately $1.3 billion of credit support for Fluidstack's obligations. TeraWulf invested approximately $450 million for a 50.1% interest. The project subsequently issued $1.3 billion in senior secured notes to support construction. The Abernathy arrangements were expected to produce approximately $9.5 billion in contracted revenue for the joint venture over the initial 25-year term.
TeraWulf agreed to sell its Abernathy interest for approximately $530 million, compared with its $450 million original investment. Consideration will be paid in three installments through April 2027. The proceeds are expected to support investment in infrastructure opportunities TeraWulf intends to own and operate directly. Fluidstack remains an important tenant at TeraWulf's Lake Mariner campus in New York, and the companies have built a substantial pipeline of AI infrastructure together.
In strategic terms, TeraWulf is acting as both developer and capital allocator. It originated the Abernathy project, helped secure the customer and financing structure, advanced construction and is now monetizing its interest before the campus reaches full operations. As sale proceeds are received, the capital is being redirected toward sites such as Justified Data.
This operating strategy reflects TeraWulf's deliberate focus on brownfield industrial properties that either generated or consumed substantial quantities of electricity. Lake Mariner, the company's campus in Barker, New York, occupies a retired coal-fired power plant site and retains two 345-kV transmission lines, substation assets and other electrical infrastructure originally built to support industrial-scale power generation. TeraWulf expects Lake Mariner ultimately to support as much as 750 MW of capacity. For the data center industry broadly, the Justified Data announcement illustrates how rapidly existing transmission infrastructure, industrial zoning and large contiguous power positions can be converted into long-term AI infrastructure value.