Anthropic cut a $3.4B deal to speed up its access to power by purchasing its own gas turbines.
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The artificial intelligence giant bought commitments for 1.7 gigawatts worth of heavy-duty generators from San Antonio-based OnePWR Solutions, the Financial Times reported Sunday.
The deal is the largest single purchase of equipment for power generation by an AI lab to date, according to the FT, and it comes as the race to build out data centers is increasingly constrained by access to energy.
Anthropic, which is exploring a highly anticipated initial public offering as soon as this month, is taking over the generator contracts from Caterpillar, which initially ordered them from OnePWR two years ago but needed financing to complete the deal, the FT reported.
Anthropic was already slated to become a customer of OnePWR, which sources turnkey behind-the-meter solutions for customers, before identifying the Caterpillar opportunity that includes the engineering and construction capabilities needed to install the generators. The power is expected to be available in the near term and over the next two years.
OnePWR and Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday morning.
Anthropic has disclosed nearly $900B in computing commitments through 2045. The artificial intelligence giant, best known for its Claude tool, made the first filings to disclose its plans to go public on Oct. 26, setting the table for an IPO that will gauge investors’ appetite for massive valuations for the cash-burning frontier AI model firms.
Anthropic’s IPO is expected to value the company at $1.5T, but major investors are skeptical that the AI giant can reach those heights, with one telling The Wall Street Journal the value could come in closer to $1T.
Tech stocks with exposure to AI have been volatile this month, with a steep sell-off pushing the Nasdaq composite into correction territory on Thursday before recovering some of those losses Friday. The index continued to recover Monday, gaining more than 2% in premarket trading, but it is still down roughly 8% over the last month.
The Anthropic IPO is being closely watched after rival OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, delayed plans to go public until next year and is instead trying to raise $20B at a $1.25T valuation, Bloomberg reported.
Access to energy has long been a limiting factor in data center development that became more pressing after the 2022 launch of ChatGPT kicked off insatiable demand for computing power.
The world’s biggest data center operators have set aggressive targets for cutting emissions on their expansive portfolios, but the rise of self-operated energy solutions and the need for fast access to power have made gas solutions increasingly popular.
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