Anthropic has unveiled a partnership with Google and Broadcom to secure 'multiple gigawatts' of next-generation TPU computing capacity, expected to become operational starting in 2027, marking the company's largest commitment to date as it achieves a $30 billion annual revenue run rate, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025. The scale of AI computing demand is now directly competing with bitcoin mining for the same limited resources, including grid connections, land permits, cooling infrastructure, and affordable electricity.
According to a Cambridge tracker, bitcoin mining globally consumes approximately 13 to 25 gigawatts of continuous power, depending on hardware efficiency. Anthropic's acquisition of multiple gigawatts through this single deal, in addition to its existing capacity across AWS Trainium, Google TPUs, and Nvidia GPUs, demonstrates the rapid growth of AI as a major competitor for the same energy infrastructure that miners rely on. Furthermore, OpenAI, which recently raised $122 billion and emphasized compute as a 'strategic moat,' is expanding its infrastructure across an even broader portfolio spanning five cloud providers and four chip platforms.
The collective AI compute expansion 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 seen in Core Scientific's conversion of significant mining capacity to AI hosting through a deal with CoreWeave, and the expansion of AI and high-performance computing revenue by Iris Energy and Hut 8. The economic reality is that mining economics alone are no longer sufficient to sustain operations at current prices and difficulty levels, prompting companies like Riot Platforms, MARA Holdings, and Genius Group to sell their BTC holdings.
A bitcoin miner operating a gigawatt of capacity earns fluctuating revenue based on bitcoin's price and network difficulty, whereas renting the same capacity 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, AI rentals often provide better compensation. The revenue growth behind this expansion is notable, 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 network's hashrate continues to reach record levels above 1 zetahash per second. However, the miners that survive this cycle may evolve to resemble infrastructure companies that happen to mine bitcoin while renting their primary asset, affordable power at scale, to an AI industry struggling to build data centers quickly enough.