Anthropic buys $3.4 billion in gas generators for AI power, FT reports

Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI models, is moving from renting power to buying the machines that make it, according to a newspaper report. The company agreed in late September to pay about $3.4 billion for 1.7 gigawatts of gas-fired generators for its data centers, the Financial Times reported Sunday, according to CNBC. Neither Anthropic nor the supplier responded to requests for comment, and Reuters said it could not immediately verify the report.

The deal shows how hard electricity has become to find for AI companies. Anthropic has generally avoided owning physical infrastructure, TechCrunch noted, and its prospectus describes a strategy built largely on leasing computing power from others. Buying generators outright is a break from that approach, and TechCrunch described it as a last resort.

The equipment comes from Caterpillar, by way of a smaller company. OnePWR Solutions, a San Antonio equipment supplier, ordered the Caterpillar generators about two years ago, before recent price increases, but needed financing to complete the purchase, Data Center Dynamics reported. Rather than become a OnePWR customer, Anthropic took over the equipment orders. It did not acquire OnePWR, and none of the supplier's employees moved to Anthropic, but the deal includes the engineering and construction capabilities needed to install the generators, according to the FT's account.

Timing is the prize. Global turbine orders have reportedly exceeded 100 gigawatts against manufacturing capacity of an estimated 60 to 70 gigawatts, and average delivery times in the U.S. have reached six years, with some orders stretching into 2030 or 2031, Tom's Hardware reported. By stepping into existing orders, Anthropic avoids starting at the back of that line. The generators are expected to be available within the next two years, according to Data Center Dynamics, which called the deal the largest known single purchase of power-generation equipment by a frontier AI lab.

The purchase sits on top of an enormous compute bill. Anthropic expects to spend more than $500 billion over the next 10 years building AI infrastructure, Reuters reported in September. According to its prospectus, it has also committed hundreds of billions of dollars to lease computing capacity from Google, SpaceX, Amazon and Microsoft, plus deals with Nscale, Lambda and Fluidstack. Strong demand for its Claude models has pushed the company to secure more computing and power capacity, CNBC reported. Anthropic is expected to have more than 3.5 gigawatts of compute this year, with a similar amount due in 2027, Data Center Dynamics said, citing the New York Times.

Anthropic is following others into gas. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta have all announced plans to build large natural gas plants to power data centers on-site rather than drawing from the grid, TechCrunch noted. Elon Musk's xAI installed eight converted General Electric jet turbines at a data center in Mississippi, each able to generate up to 50 megawatts, and the Southern Environmental Law Center has challenged that site's emissions permits. Musk's companies have also moved into equipment. SpaceX acquired APR Energy, which has a fleet of trailer-mounted gas and diesel generators capable of producing more than 1 gigawatt, in July, and some turbine blades reportedly take 60 to 90 weeks to manufacture. Crusoe, which is developing OpenAI's first Stargate data center in Abilene, Texas, acquired 29 GE Vernova gas turbines that together could generate up to 986 megawatts, Tom's Hardware reported.

The bet carries price and environmental risk. If the buildout proceeds as planned, U.S. data centers alone could consume more natural gas than Germany and Japan combined by 2035, and one analyst expects gas prices could more than triple by the end of the decade in some markets, TechCrunch reported. Critics have also pointed to emissions from on-site gas generation. Securing electricity quickly does not remove the environmental cost of generating it, Tom's Hardware noted.

For now, the calculation is simple: compute demand for Claude keeps rising, and power is the scarcest input. The same race is lifting geothermal developers, as 1NFLUENC3 reported on Fervo's Google-driven order book. More is in the Tech Sector.