Riot Platforms reported second-quarter results on August 10 and, in the same package, disclosed a 20-year data center lease for 191 megawatts of critical IT capacity at its Rockdale campus. The company expects about $9.1 billion in total contract revenue over the initial term with what it calls a leading frontier AI lab. Together with an existing AMD arrangement, Riot now cites 241 MW of contracted critical IT capacity.

The mining business did not vanish overnight. Riot still produced bitcoin in the quarter and posted $174.2 million in revenue, up 14% year over year, including $23.2 million from data center operations. The strategic point is elsewhere: long-duration compute leases price power, land, and interconnection as a utility product, while hashprice remains a volatile residual.

Bloomberg later reported the unnamed lab is Anthropic. Riot’s own release keeps the counterparty generic, which is enough for the market read. Investors bid the stock sharply after hours because contracted AI rent looks steadier than block rewards. Delivery still sits ahead. Initial capacity is slated for late 2027, with fuller buildout into 2028, so execution risk is measured in years, not press cycles.

Watch interconnection milestones, how much of Rockdale stays in mining versus IT load, and whether similar miners reprice themselves as landlords before the power is actually energized.