Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) stock surged nearly 25% in pre-market trading on August 11 after the company announced a long-term AI data center agreement worth an estimated $9.1 billion.
The Bitcoin (BTC) mining stock jumped from Monday’s close of $19.40 to as high as $23.65, up 22% in pre-market trading as investors focused on the scale of the deal and Riot’s growing exposure to artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The catalyst was a newly signed 20-year lease agreement at Riot’s Rockdale campus in Texas. Under the deal, Riot will provide 191 megawatts of critical IT capacity to what it described as a leading frontier AI lab.
While Riot did not publicly identify the customer, reports citing people familiar with the matter indicated the tenant is Anthropic, the developer behind the Claude AI models.
The agreement is expected to generate approximately $9.1 billion in revenue through June 2048. Two optional five-year extensions could increase the total contract value to about $16.1 billion.
Riot plans to deliver the first 96 megawatts of capacity by December 2027, with full deployment targeted for June 2028.
Riot earnings report
The announcement accompanied Riot’s second-quarter 2026 earnings report, which showed revenue increased 14% year-over-year to $174.2 million.
Bitcoin mining remained the company’s largest business, generating $113.7 million in revenue after Riot produced 1,587 Bitcoin during the quarter.
The data center segment contributed $23.2 million, while the engineering business generated $37.3 million.
Despite the revenue growth, Riot reported a GAAP net loss of $237 million, or $0.68 per share, largely driven by non-cash charges linked to Bitcoin price movements and depreciation expenses.
Investors looked past the quarterly loss and focused on the long-term revenue potential of the new AI infrastructure contract.
The latest agreement marks another step in Riot’s transition from a pure Bitcoin miner to an AI infrastructure provider.
Earlier this year, the cryptocurrency company expanded its partnership with AMD, bringing total contracted capacity under that agreement to 50 megawatts.
Combined with the new lease, Riot now has 241 megawatts of contracted data center capacity and roughly $9.8 billion in long-term revenue commitments secured within seven months.
The firm ended the quarter with approximately $1.2 billion in liquidity, including $666 million in Bitcoin holdings and nearly $549 million in cash.
Overall, the market’s reaction suggests investors are increasingly valuing Riot as an AI infrastructure company rather than solely a Bitcoin mining stock.
