Anthropic has announced a landmark partnership with Google and Broadcom for 'multiple gigawatts' of next-generation computing capacity, expected to come online starting in 2027, marking the company's largest commitment to date as revenue growth accelerates to a $30 billion annual run rate from $9 billion at the end of 2025. The significant 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. According to a Cambridge tracker, bitcoin mining globally consumes approximately 13 to 25 gigawatts of continuous power, depending on hardware efficiency assumptions. Anthropic's securing of multiple gigawatts from a single deal, in addition to its existing capacity across various platforms, highlights the rapid emergence of AI as a major competitor for the same energy infrastructure that miners rely on.
This trend is further amplified by other AI companies, such as OpenAI, which is building a vast infrastructure portfolio spanning multiple cloud providers and chip platforms. The collective AI computing expansion represents one of the largest sources of new electricity demand in the United States, coinciding with the period when bitcoin miners are deciding whether to mine bitcoin or rent their infrastructure to AI companies.
Increasingly, this decision is leaning towards the latter, with several mining companies converting their capacity to AI hosting or expanding their AI and high-performance computing revenue. The economics of mining are becoming less sustainable, with some miners selling their bitcoin treasuries, indicating that mining alone is not sufficient to support operations at current prices and difficulty levels. In contrast, renting infrastructure to AI companies offers a contracted rate with predictable cash flows, often proving more lucrative. While this shift does not signify the demise of bitcoin mining, the industry's survivors may evolve to resemble infrastructure companies that mine bitcoin as a secondary activity, primarily leveraging their asset of cheap power at scale to meet the insatiable demand of the AI industry.