Shares of Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) jumped 17% to $22.64 Tuesday morning after the company disclosed a landmark artificial intelligence data center lease agreement alongside its latest quarterly results.
The surge follows an after-hours gain of more than 25% on Monday, when RIOT stock had closed the regular trading session down 5.46%, making the reversal all the more dramatic.
The catalyst is a 20-year co-location agreement at Riot’s Rockdale, Texas campus, supplying 191 MW of critical IT capacity to what Bloomberg identified as Anthropic, described by the company only as a “leading frontier AI lab.”
The lease is expected to generate approximately $9.1 billion in contract revenue through June 2048, with two five-year extension options that could lift total potential value to around $16.1 billion.
Delivery under the new lease is staged, with 96 IT MW scheduled by December 2027 and the full 191 IT MW by June 2028, giving Riot a multi-year construction runway ahead.
Morgan Stanley is providing $573 million in interim financing while Riot finalizes a permanent credit backstop for the buildout, underscoring the capital intensity of the project.
Combined with an existing lease with Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD), Riot now controls 241 MW of contracted capacity and roughly $9.8 billion of long-term contracted revenue.
CEO Jason Les stated, “Today’s announcement of a landmark 20-year, 191-megawatt data center lease with a leading frontier AI lab marks a defining moment in our evolution into a leading developer of large-scale data centers.”
Les added that Riot has now executed 241 MW of leases with two of the most important companies in the AI ecosystem, framing the pivot away from pure Bitcoin mining as a strategic transformation rather than an opportunistic sidestep.
Riot’s quarterly financials present a more mixed picture, with revenue rising 14% year over year to $174.2 million while the company swung to a net loss of $237.2 million, or approximately $0.68 per diluted share, from a year-ago profit.
Analysts responded swiftly to the announcement, with Bernstein raising its price target to $35 from $30 with an Outperform rating, citing both the Anthropic lease and a non-binding letter of intent covering Riot’s 1 GW Corsicana site.
Citi lifted its target to $32 from $28 with a Buy rating, calling the Q2 report “transformational,” while Piper Sandler moved to $25 from $23 with an Overweight rating.
Former Bitcoin miners repositioning as AI and high-performance computing infrastructure operators caught a modest read-through bid, with IREN (NASDAQ: IREN) up 2% to $39.58, Applied Digital (NASDAQ: APLD) up 2% to $29.56, and TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF) up 2% to $16.58.
The Global X Data Center and Digital Infrastructure ETF (NASDAQ: DTCR) rose just 1% to $28.25, reinforcing that Tuesday’s move is a single-name event driven by Riot’s specific contract rather than a broad sector re-rating.
Investors and traders will be watching closely for conversion of the Corsicana letter of intent into a signed agreement, updates on the permanent credit facility replacing the Morgan Stanley bridge, and construction milestones ahead of the December 2027 initial Anthropic delivery date.
