A bitcoin miner leases its whole campus to an AI lab

Riot Platforms, best known as a bitcoin miner, has leased the whole of its Corsicana campus in Texas to what it calls a leading frontier AI lab, without naming it. The 15-year lease covers 910 megawatts of critical IT capacity on a contiguous 332-acre parcel, with about $28 billion of total contract value and about $1.8 billion of average annual rent including escalators. If both five-year extension options are exercised, the value rises to about $54 billion. Riot says it is the largest lease in its history.

The structure is what keeps Riot's spending down. Under a triple-net powered land lease, Riot delivers the land, the power infrastructure and powered pads, and keeps owning the high- and medium-voltage equipment; the tenant buys, installs and runs the compute and bears substantially all operating costs, including power. Rent is due on the full 910 MW regardless of use. Riot puts the capital need at $6 million per megawatt, about $5.5 billion in total and roughly half a typical Tier 3 build, and says it does not expect to issue equity for it.

Delivery comes in three phases: 400 MW in September 2027, 200 MW in January 2028 and 310 MW in July 2028, with rent on each starting no later than 60 days after delivery. Riot will fund $2 million per megawatt for site work and electrical infrastructure, and reimburse the tenant the other $4 million per megawatt in phases once each is delivered and paying rent, with the reimbursements expected to be financed by non-recourse project debt.

The quarter itself shows the shift. Revenue was $181.4 million, up 1 percent, as mining revenue fell to $116.0 million on a lower average bitcoin price while engineering revenue rose to $47.0 million and data centre revenue reached $18.4 million. Riot has sold 20,264 bitcoin this year for about $1.5 billion, mainly to fund data centres, and now counts 1,151 MW leased and about $38 billion of contracted revenue, including an earlier lease with the same lab at Rockdale and an AMD contract. The figures come from Riot's results release filed with the SEC.