Anthropic has established a $35 billion cloud computing contract (approximately R$187 billion) with Lambda, a cloud service provider supported by Nvidia. According to sources close to the deal, Nvidia itself will be responsible for the lease agreement of the data center where the infrastructure will be installed.
This data center is being built by Hut 8, a company involved in Bitcoin mining and data center development, located in Nueces County, Texas, United States. Several weeks ago, Nvidia signed an agreement with Hut 8 to secure the necessary capacity for this operation, according to sources consulted by The Wall Street Journal.
The structure of this deal demonstrates the growing role of Nvidia in helping companies like Anthropic, which do not have investment-grade status, access high-cost computing resources. Simultaneously, the agreement allows Lambda, a still early-stage cloud provider, to conclude a large contract with Anthropic without needing to acquire physical space in a data center on its own.
Anthropic has intensified the signing of contracts to secure cloud capacity after facing supply shortages earlier this year, a period that coincided with increased demand for its products. In early August, the company closed another significant deal, valued at $45 billion (about R$241 billion), with Nscale, another Nvidia-backed cloud computing company. In this second case, Anthropic will rent capacity equipped with Nvidia chips in an Nscale facility located in West Virginia, USA.
Details about the infrastructure projects
The arrangement made in Texas is notable because Hut 8 is also independently developing data centers for Anthropic, which will use Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), competitors to Nvidia's chips. Google offered financial guarantees to support these ventures and assist Hut 8 in raising debt financing.
This situation positions Hut 8 at the epicenter of several AI infrastructure projects employing competing technologies. On one side, there are facilities intended to receive Nvidia chips; on the other, there are projects that will use processors developed by Google.
In July, Hut 8 announced that an 'investment-grade' company had signed 15-year lease agreements for all the capacity of its 700-megawatt complex in Texas. At that time, the company did not disclose the tenant's name, but Hut 8 stated that the installation, valued at $20 billion (about R$107 billion), would be designed to operate with Nvidia chips.
Currently, the agreement involving Anthropic, Lambda, and Nvidia adds new layers to the occupancy and financing structure of the campus capacity. In July, Nvidia launched an initiative to provide credit support to companies called neoclouds, a category that includes companies like Lambda. In return, Nvidia would receive a portion of the revenue generated by these companies' cloud computing activities.
However, this program has recently undergone changes. Nvidia suspended certain agreements planned under the revenue-sharing initiative. The report could not confirm whether Lambda will have to pass on a share of the revenue obtained from the Texas data center operation to Nvidia.