Anthropic has announced a landmark partnership with Google and Broadcom to secure multiple gigawatts of next-generation TPU compute capacity, slated to come online in 2027. This significant commitment marks a major milestone for the company, with revenue growth accelerating to a $30 billion annual run rate from $9 billion at the end of 2025. The massive scale of AI compute 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 assumptions. Anthropic's multigigawatt deal, combined with its existing capacity across AWS Trainium, Google TPUs, and Nvidia GPUs, underscores the rapid emergence of AI as a peer-level competitor for the same energy infrastructure that miners rely on.
Furthermore, OpenAI, having raised $122 billion, is expanding its infrastructure portfolio across five cloud providers and four chip platforms, contributing to the aggregate AI compute buildout, which now represents one of the largest sources of new electricity demand in the United States. This development coincides with bitcoin miners deciding whether to mine bitcoin or rent their infrastructure to AI companies. An increasing number of miners, such as Core Scientific, Iris Energy, and Hut 8, are opting to convert their mining capacity to AI hosting or expand their AI and high-performance computing revenue. Notably, Riot Platforms, MARA Holdings, and Genius Group have disclosed selling over 19,000 BTC from their treasuries, indicating that mining economics alone are no longer sustaining operations at current prices and difficulty levels.
A bitcoin miner operating a gigawatt of capacity earns revenue that fluctuates with bitcoin's price and network difficulty, whereas renting the same gigawatt to an AI company generates a contracted rate with predictable cash flows. At current prices and difficulty levels, with energy costs rising, the AI rental often provides a more lucrative option. The revenue numbers behind the expansion are telling, 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 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 that is struggling to build data centers quickly enough.