Anthropic will lease the next set of data centers built for it rather than own them. The company, Macquarie Asset Management and Singapore's sovereign fund GIC announced Theseus Infrastructure on August 10, a platform that will develop, operate and lease data centers to Anthropic under long-term agreements.
Funds managed by Macquarie and GIC own the platform and fund the majority of the equity in each project. The three will identify and develop new sites together, with Anthropic as anchor tenant at each and an initial focus on the United States. Each facility will be purpose-built for Anthropic rather than let to multiple tenants, and the platform will operate the sites as well as develop and finance them.
Anthropic has assembled capacity several other ways. It hired Microsoft's Azure AI chief in April to run a $50 billion buildout, a program that began with sites in Texas and New York developed by the neocloud provider Fluidstack and coming online through this year. In July it signed a $19 billion, 20-year lease with TeraWulf for capacity in Kentucky. Broadcom, Apollo and Blackstone built a $35 billion financing structure for its next gigawatt in June.
Anthropic will cover consumer electricity price increases tied to the new sites, in line with a commitment it made in February. Under that pledge the company works with utilities to calculate the full cost of the grid upgrades needed to interconnect its data centers, including transmission lines and substations, and pays 100 percent of it rather than letting those costs spread across every ratepayer. It also committed to bringing new generation online, to cutting its own consumption by up to 30 percent during periods of peak demand, and to investing in the communities around its sites.
Data centers push consumer bills up two ways: connecting one often requires new or upgraded transmission lines and substations, and the added demand tightens the wholesale market. Utilities now ask developers for bank letters of credit before they will even study a connection request, and New York in July imposed the first statewide moratorium on permits for large sites.
Macquarie Asset Management brings what the partners described as global expertise in developing, financing and operating large-scale digital infrastructure. GIC manages Singapore's foreign reserves and has invested in infrastructure worldwide.
The partners said the planned developments will require significant capital investment and will create thousands of construction jobs and permanent operational roles in the communities that host the sites.
Sources: Macquarie, Bloomberg, Data Center Dynamics
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By the Control Plane Editorial Team