Anthropic Buys $3.4 Billion Worth of Natural Gas Turbines

Due to the energy crisis in the artificial intelligence sector, Anthropic—which had previously avoided purchasing physical infrastructure—has taken a step into infrastructure investments by acquiring $3.4 billion worth of natural gas turbines.

According to a Financial Times report, AI company Anthropic, which plans to go public this year, is purchasing Caterpillar generators previously ordered by equipment supplier OnePWR. For these generators, which have a power generation capacity of up to 1.7 gigawatts, Anthropic bypassed OnePWR after failing to reach an agreement and negotiated directly with the manufacturer Caterpillar. While it is stated that Anthropic took this step directly because OnePWR failed to secure financing, it is suggested that the company may have wanted to avoid losing production capacity to its competitors.

Having previously preferred leasing infrastructure rather than purchasing it, the company disclosed in its May S-1 filing that it pays SpaceX subsidiary xAI $1.25 billion per month through May 2029. The fact that wait times for natural gas turbines and electrical grid interconnection queues extend into the early 2030s was among the factors that pushed the company to make this major acquisition. Other major AI companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta have also announced plans to build on-site natural gas power plants rather than powering their data centers directly from the grid.