Anthropic's race to secure AI infrastructure accelerates: Company signs $35 billion deal backed by Nvidia

In a potential game changer in the race to secure key artificial intelligence infrastructure, Anthropic signed a $35 billion deal with Lambda, a cloud computing services provider backed by Nvidia.

The goal is to secure the computing power needed to train and run its artificial intelligence models as demand for this technology continues to grow.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, sources close to the negotiations said Nvidia itself controls the lease agreement for the data center where the entire system will operate.

Hut 8, a company dedicated to both bitcoin mining and building such facilities, is building that data center in Nueces County, Texas. Weeks ago, Nvidia reached an agreement with Hut 8 to reserve that space, according to the same sources cited by the newspaper.

The arrangement is complex, but it reflects a trend that is becoming increasingly common in the industry. Nvidia uses its financial clout to help companies such as Anthropic, which do not yet have the financial strength of a large traditional corporation to access its expensive processors. At the same time, the deal also benefits Lambda, a relatively new cloud company, which secured a multimillion-dollar contract with Anthropic without having to build or manage the data center itself, since that work was left to Nvidia and Hut 8.

This agreement is in addition to another Anthropic signed this month for $45 billion with Nscale, another company of this type also backed by Nvidia, to use its capacity at a facility in West Virginia. Both agreements address the same problem. Earlier this year, Anthropic ran out of infrastructure capacity as demand for its products surged, forcing it to scramble to find more capacity as quickly as possible.

The Texas case has an interesting twist. Hut 8 is also building other data centers for Anthropic that will use Google processors, which compete directly with Nvidia's. Google provided financial guarantees for those projects, helping Hut 8 secure the necessary funds through loans, leaving the same company working simultaneously for Nvidia and one of its main rivals.

In July, Hut 8 reported that a "financially strong" company had signed 15-year lease agreements for its entire 700-megawatt facility in Texas, though it did not reveal the company's identity at the time. The company did confirm that the facility, valued at $20 billion, would be equipped to run on Nvidia processors.

That same month, Nvidia had announced a plan to offer financial backing to startups like Lambda, in exchange for a share of their profits from these services. However, the company recently put some of those agreements on hold, according to a WSJ report. For now, it is unclear whether Lambda will have to share with Nvidia a portion of the profits it generates specifically at its new Texas facility.