Anthropic invests another 10 billions to secure computing power, with Nvidia-backed emerging companies taking orders

This marks the latest move in Anthropic’s recent series of compute capacity investments.

As demand for its Claude products continues to expand, Anthropic has consecutively reached compute power agreements with SpaceX, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., and Akamai Technologies Inc., and is reportedly in talks with Meta Platforms Inc. to lease data center capacity. This deal further underscores AI developers’ urgent need for infrastructure resources and the enormous investments fueling this competitive race.

According to Volta, the involved Norwegian data center has a compute capacity of 133 megawatts and will be equipped with NVIDIA’s newest generation Vera Rubin chips. Volta CEO Ricard Boada declined to disclose the client’s name.

Volta was founded this January by former executives from Brookfield Asset Management Ltd., focusing on AI computing power leasing and assisting clients with financing solutions for expensive chip purchases. On the same day, the company announced it completed a $300 million venture funding round, bringing its valuation to $2.4 billion.

Volta’s partner Bitdeer is a typical example of a Bitcoin mining company undergoing transformation.

With Bitcoin prices under pressure, more miners are shifting part of their data center computing power from cryptocurrency mining to AI applications. In its July 21 monthly operations report, Bitdeer stated it plans to repurpose some of its mining sites in Texas, Tennessee, and Washington.

The arms race for compute power is underpinned by ever-growing capital needs.

Earlier this year, Anthropic completed a $6.5 billion funding round, with proceeds mainly used to cover the high costs of AI development. At the same time, the company is reportedly considering going public to raise capital, potentially as early as this year.

This multi-billion dollar deal with Volta demonstrates AI developers’ strong reliance on external financing and compute providers. Both Anthropic and its rival OpenAI depend on a mix of large tech firms and emerging cloud computing startups to build the data center networks they believe are necessary for the continual evolution and large-scale commercialization of AI systems.

This expansion of computing power is not without controversy.

In the past year, several funding arrangements involving OpenAI and Anthropic have drawn criticism for their “circularity”—the increasingly intricate web of interdependence between tech vendors and AI developers, where, should demand for AI fall short of current high expectations, potential losses could be amplified.

OpenAI’s ambitions are equally notable: founder Sam Altman previously stated publicly that the company expects to invest “trillions of dollars” in AI physical infrastructure.

OpenAI is currently planning a new data center in Georgia that could cost over $30 billion. According to Bloomberg, NVIDIA is also in talks with OpenAI, considering assisting with leasing a massive compute hub led by SoftBank Group in Ohio valued at $500 billion and equipped with 10 gigawatts of capacity.