Riot secures $573M bridge for $9.1B Anthropic lease

Riot Platforms arranged up to $573 million of interim, delayed-draw financing for its Rockdale, Texas, data-center project tied to a 20-year lease with Anthropic. The senior secured facility is administered by Morgan Stanley Senior Funding and matures on Dec. 31, 2026, about a year before the first capacity is scheduled to come online and before rent payments begin.

The facility is intended to cover long-lead equipment and initial development costs. As a delayed-draw structure, the $573 million reflects available borrowing capacity rather than cash already received. Riot described the financing as interim while it works to secure an investment-grade credit backstop and has not disclosed the backstop provider, committed amount or binding terms.

Under the lease, a Riot subsidiary agreed to provide 191 megawatts of critical IT capacity at the Rockdale campus on a 20-year term valued at about $9.1 billion through June 2048. Two five-year extension options could raise the contract value to $16.1 billion. Riot’s schedule calls for the first 96 megawatts to be delivered in December 2027 and the remaining 95 megawatts by June 2028. The Morgan Stanley facility therefore expires roughly 12 months before the tenant begins occupying capacity and paying rent.

Riot estimates the full Rockdale buildout will cost between $2.1 billion and $2.3 billion and expects to finance roughly $1.7 billion to $2.1 billion assuming an 80% to 90% loan-to-cost ratio. Borrowings under the Morgan Stanley facility carry interest at adjusted term SOFR plus 2.75% or a defined base rate plus 1.75%, along with customary fees. The debt is secured primarily by assets of the project borrower and specified credit parties and is structured with generally no recourse to Riot Platforms itself. The disclosed collateral did not identify Bitcoin holdings.

Riot described the tenant only as a leading frontier AI lab and has not publicly named the customer. The company holds about 11,380 bitcoins on its balance sheet and has indicated it does not intend to pledge those holdings as collateral for the Rockdale financing. The Rockdale project departs from Riot’s core bitcoin-mining operations and develops large-scale data-center capacity for AI compute under a long-term lease.

Because the bridge loan matures before capacity delivery and rent commencement, securing permanent financing or an investment-grade backstop before Dec. 31, 2026 is required for the planned timeline. Riot has not disclosed the expected timing, provider or terms of the longer-term backstop it is pursuing.