Anthropic Accelerates AI Data Center Expansion with IREN Deal

AI firm's infrastructure to reach 15 GW by 2028, backed by $530 billion investments across 10+ cloud providers

Anthropic is accelerating its acquisition of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers by signing a multi-year cloud contract with neocloud company IREN.

The Information, a US IT-focused media outlet, reported on the 11th (local time) that Anthropic had finalized the multi-year cloud agreement with IREN. Specific details regarding the contract's scale and duration were not disclosed.

In addition to IREN, Anthropic has also secured data center leasing agreements with over 10 cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google, totaling 15 gigawatts (GW) and approximately 530 billion dollars (around 720 trillion Korean won). As a result, Anthropic's AI computing capacity is projected to grow from 1.4 GW last year to 5 GW this year, 9.5 GW next year, and over 15 GW by 2028.

The Information analyzed that Anthropic is rushing to secure and operate data centers because faster server deployment can generate massive revenue. According to estimates by investors and analysts, if Anthropic uses its 245-megawatt (MW) data center in Louisiana entirely for AI answer generation (inference) and begins operations one month earlier than planned, it could generate an additional 1.3 billion dollars (approximately 1.8 trillion Korean won) in revenue.

The data center, developed by Hut 8 and operated by Fluidstack, will begin using Google Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) in the second quarter of next year. Infrastructure advisory firm Ocumedge estimated that if Anthropic spends approximately 200 million dollars per month to lease chips at this facility, its gross profit margin could reach 85%. However, this calculation excludes model training costs and labor expenses.

The Information reported that based on this profitability, Anthropic recorded a slight profit in the second quarter of this year.

Energy analysis firm Royal Powers Energy analyzed that AI inference data centers can remain profitable even at a power cost of 5,631 dollars per megawatt-hour (MWh), which is over 100 times the typical wholesale electricity price.

Nevertheless, the cost burden from large-scale server leasing remains a variable. The Information noted that Anthropic's profit margins could narrow as it significantly expands server leasing this year. Additionally, major clients like Microsoft and Meta have reduced spending related to Anthropic, while competition with rivals like OpenAI intensifies.