Anthropic has unveiled a partnership with Google and Broadcom to secure multiple gigawatts of next-generation computing capacity, slated to come online starting in 2027. This commitment marks the company's most significant to date, with revenue growth accelerating to a $30 billion annual run rate from $9 billion at the end of 2025. The scale of AI computing demand now directly competes with bitcoin mining for the same limited resources, including grid connections, land permits, cooling infrastructure, and affordable electricity.
A Cambridge tracker estimates that bitcoin mining globally draws approximately 13 to 25 gigawatts of continuous power, depending on hardware efficiency assumptions. Anthropic's acquisition of multiple gigawatts from a single deal, in addition to its existing capacity across AWS Trainium, Google TPUs, and Nvidia GPUs, highlights the rapid emergence of AI as a peer-level competitor for the same energy infrastructure that miners rely on. Furthermore, the aggregate AI computing buildout has become one of the largest sources of new electricity demand in the United States, coinciding with bitcoin miners' decisions on whether to mine bitcoin or rent their infrastructure to AI companies.
This decision is increasingly favoring the latter, as evidenced by Core Scientific's conversion of significant mining capacity to AI hosting and the expansion of AI and high-performance computing revenue by Iris Energy and Hut 8. The revenue generated by a bitcoin miner operating a gigawatt of capacity fluctuates with bitcoin's price and network difficulty, whereas renting the same gigawatt to an AI company yields a contracted rate with predictable cash flows.
At a bitcoin price of $69,000, with difficulty at all-time highs and rising energy costs, the AI rental option often proves more lucrative. The revenue numbers behind the expansion tell a compelling story, with Anthropic reporting that the number of business customers spending over $1 million annually on Claude has doubled from 500 to over 1,000 in less than two months.
While this does not signify the demise of bitcoin mining, the miners that survive the current cycle may evolve to resemble infrastructure companies that happen to mine bitcoin on the side, while renting their primary asset – affordable power at scale – to an AI industry struggling to build data centers quickly enough.