TeraWulf surges after $19 billion Anthropic data-center lease deal

TeraWulf jumped after striking a 20-year lease with Anthropic that the company said should generate about $19 billion in contracted revenue, a deal that pushed its shares up more than 10% in early trading and added to a stock that had already climbed about 85% this year.

The agreement centers on a purpose-built AI infrastructure campus at TeraWulf’s Justified Data site in Hawesville, Kentucky. The project is slated to support about 401 megawatts of critical IT load, with initial capacity expected in the second half of 2027 and full capacity by early 2028. TeraWulf said the lease is expected to be supported by investment-grade credit, a detail that matters as the company tries to convert power access and real estate into a steadier, contract-backed business.

The Anthropic deal lands alongside another financing move: TeraWulf is selling its 50.1% stake in the Abernathy joint venture to an investor group led by Fluidstack. The company said the transaction monetizes a roughly $450 million investment, while its own release said the payment structure totals about $530 million through April 2027. That cash can be redirected toward wholly owned AI infrastructure projects, giving TeraWulf more room to build out assets without relying as heavily on outside partners.

The shift is already visible in TeraWulf’s operating results. In its first-quarter 2026 numbers, high-performance computing leasing revenue reached $21 million, topping bitcoin-mining revenue of $13 million for the first time. In May, TeraWulf said its business would increasingly be driven by the move away from bitcoin mining, and it also said it had energized 60 megawatts of critical IT capacity at its Lake Mariner campus by March 31. Together, those figures show a company recasting itself around long-duration AI contracts rather than the more volatile economics of digital-asset mining.

The stock move also reflects a broader reordering of the infrastructure market. Companies with power-heavy, crypto-era footprints are racing to sign large AI tenants, where demand for electricity, cooling and land is forcing a new class of long-lived computing assets into place. For TeraWulf, the key question is no longer whether it can lease power-hungry infrastructure, but whether it can execute a multibillion-dollar buildout on schedule and keep the economics intact through 2028 and beyond.