---
id: "2026-07-06-terawulf-anthropic-19b-kentucky-lease"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-07-06-terawulf-anthropic-19b-kentucky-lease/"
as_of: "2026-10-12T07:22:00+02:00"
date: "2026-07-06"
date_precision: day
category: hardware-compute
importance: 3
confidence: high
status: [Confirmed]
sources: 4
editor: Adam Bicz
human_review: null
version: null
---

As of: 2026-10-12 07:22 CEST.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code). Human editor: Adam Bicz.
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-07-06-terawulf-anthropic-19b-kentucky-lease/

# Anthropic signs a 20-year, ~$19B lease for 401 MW at TeraWulf's Justified Data campus in Hawesville, Kentucky

On July 6, 2026 TeraWulf, a former bitcoin miner, announced a 20-year lease with Anthropic for about 401 MW of critical IT load at its Justified Data campus in Hawesville, Kentucky. TeraWulf expects about $19B of contracted lease revenue over the initial term. Capacity is due from the second half of 2027, reaching the full 401 MW by early 2028. It is one of the leases behind the roughly $518B of compute commitments that Anthropic's leaked IPO prospectus later listed.

## Key facts
- Lease: 20 years, ~401 MW of critical IT load, ~$19B of contracted lease revenue over the initial term (TeraWulf press release, July 6, 2026)
- Delivery in phases: first capacity in service in H2 2027, full 401 MW by early 2028; the lease 'creates a framework for future expansion'
- TeraWulf said the lease is 'expected to be supported by an investment-grade credit'; the release does not name the credit provider
- Same release: TeraWulf sells its 50.1% stake in the Abernathy, Texas joint venture (168 MW critical IT load; ~$450M invested) to an investor group led by its partner Fluidstack, at an undisclosed premium to invested capital
- Market reaction (Decrypt, July 6): TeraWulf shares rose nearly 14%; other miners turned AI landlords also rose (IREN 13%+, Hut 8 12%, Cipher 11%)
- CEO Paul Prager: 'The Anthropic lease validates our strategy and establishes a long-duration revenue stream'
- Unverified here (search summaries of an SEC 8-K and analyst notes, not read directly): the lessor is the subsidiary Raylan Data LLC; two five-year extensions could raise revenue to ~$33B; the site is a former Century Aluminum smelter bought in February 2026

## What happened

TeraWulf, which moved from bitcoin mining to leasing AI data centers, announced that Anthropic will take about 401 MW at its Hawesville,
Kentucky campus for 20 years. The company expects about $19B in lease revenue over the initial term. On the same day it agreed to sell its
majority stake in a Texas joint venture to Fluidstack, to put the capital into sites it owns outright.

## Why it matters

Anthropic rents most of its compute through long leases with data-center developers instead of building its own sites. This lease is one of
the larger single-site deals of 2026, next to the Nscale campus in West Virginia. It also shows how former bitcoin miners with power
contracts became landlords for frontier labs.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): 67 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): 6 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 3.8 Flash (training cutoff March 2026): 97 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): 36 days after its cutoff

## Sources

1. [TeraWulf press release: Anthropic lease at Justified Data campus and sale of Abernathy JV stake to Fluidstack (July 6, 2026)](https://investors.terawulf.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/142/) (investors.terawulf.com, official)
2. [Decrypt: Bitcoin mining stocks jump as TeraWulf signs $19 billion lease with Anthropic](https://decrypt.co/372810/bitcoin-mining-stocks-jump-terawulf-19-billion-lease-anthropic) (decrypt.co, press)
3. [DCD: Anthropic signs $19bn, 20-year lease for Kentucky data center with TeraWulf (not readable by the fetcher)](https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/anthropic-signs-19bn-20-year-lease-for-kentucky-data-center-with-terawulf/) (datacenterdynamics.com, press)
4. [Spectrum News 1: AI company Anthropic commits to long-term Hawesville campus (not read)](https://spectrumnews1.com/ky/lexington/news/2026/07/06/ai-company-anthropic-commits-to-long-term-hawesville-campus) (spectrumnews1.com, press)

## Changes

- 2026-10-12 (filed): Created as a review

## Related

- 2026-10-10: [WSJ: Dario Amodei personally asked Meta's Alexandr Wang for compute this year](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-10-wsj-ai-compute-hunt-amodei-asked-meta/index.md)
- 2026-10-01: [Anthropic prospectus: Broadcom to lend up to $42B toward a $125.2B TPU lease](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-01-broadcom-42b-convertible-loan-anthropic/index.md)
- 2026-09-28: [Reuters obtains Anthropic's IPO prospectus](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-28-anthropic-ipo-prospectus-leak/index.md)
- 2026-08-26: [Anthropic agrees to pay Nscale $45B over six years for ~460 MW at the Monarch campus in West Virginia](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-08-26-anthropic-nscale-45b-monarch-west-virginia/index.md)