Anthropic has announced a landmark partnership with Google and Broadcom, securing 'multiple gigawatts' of next-generation computing capacity slated to come online starting in 2027. This commitment marks the company's most substantial to date, as revenue growth accelerates 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 consumes 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, demonstrates the rapid rise of AI as a peer-level competitor for the same energy infrastructure that miners rely on. This development is not isolated, as OpenAI, which recently raised $122 billion and described compute as a 'strategic moat,' is building across an even broader infrastructure portfolio spanning five cloud providers and four chip platforms.
The aggregate AI compute buildout has become one of the largest sources of new electricity demand in the United States, coinciding with the decision of bitcoin miners to either mine bitcoin or rent their infrastructure to AI companies. An increasing number of miners are opting for the latter, with Core Scientific converting a significant portion of its mining capacity to AI hosting through a deal with CoreWeave. Iris Energy and Hut 8 have also expanded their AI and high-performance computing revenue, while Riot Platforms, MARA Holdings, and Genius Group have disclosed selling over 19,000 BTC from their treasuries, indicating that mining economics alone are not sufficient to sustain 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 yields a contracted rate with predictable cash flows. At $69,000 bitcoin with difficulty at all-time highs and energy costs rising alongside other industrial consumers competing for the same grid capacity, the AI rental often provides better returns. The revenue numbers behind this 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 that is struggling to build data centers quickly enough.